


Out of the Way

by Weavillain



Category: The Loud House (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Family Drama, Gen, Insecurity, Self-Hatred, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-03-23 08:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 51,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13783539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weavillain/pseuds/Weavillain
Summary: What was the use of her existence if she was just going to keep making the lives of her loved ones worse, just because she couldn't be as special as her perfect siblings? Lori didn't know, and she was certain that she didn't deserve to have a happy answer. [An "AU sequel" to "Babysitter from Heaven"/Might be bumped up to "Mature" or "Explicit" with future chapters]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> That's right, folks, the description did not lie; this is an "AU sequel" to "Babysitter from Heaven". I guess that leaves some of you wondering what exactly an "AU sequel" means, at least in relation to this story. Well, this story is an "AU" because the ending of BfH is covered (at the beginning, naturally), but it's done from a different angle than that of its predecessor. It's a "sequel" because…well, it follows the "alternate ending" of this story, which mirrors the true ending established in BfH—so, it's a sequel in…spirit, I suppose.
> 
> If that didn't make any sense to you at all, then I don't blame you at all. The point is, you're gonna wanna brush up on "Babysitter from Heaven" before reading this. I mean, you don't have to, but I highly recommend that you do.
> 
> On another note, Chapter 1 will basically be covering that "alternate" twist by retreading the events of Chapter 9 of BfH from a different angle, so you won't be seeing anything truly different from that story until Chapter 2 of this story. This also means that, again, you'll want to know what BfH is all about before you read this chapter because although this is somewhat of a "recap" chapter, there will be story elements that will be glossed over.
> 
> Oh, and although I didn't make any explicit mention of the timeline in BfH, we'll just say that that story (and this story, by proxy) begins after "The Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos" takes place.

For the first time since the clock struck midnight, the swathes of heavy clouds finally dispersed, dematerializing into the atmosphere and allowing the radiance of the stars and moon to, at long last, peek through and illuminate the peaceful, slumbering neighborhoods of Royal Woods. By this hour, a quarter past one in the morning, very few were awake to appreciate the dazzling display that lit up the sky, along with the soothing hum of the gentles gusts of winds that swept through. It was the early dawn of a new day, and it was as if nature itself promised—with its peaceful lullaby—that those with aching hearts and troubled minds could be put at ease, for there were good times to come.

If Lori Loud had even an ounce of mettle, just one spark of indignation within her to bark at such a foolish line of thought with ridicule, she would've done so a hundred times over. But as she sat at the edge of her bed, staring blankly up at the night sky through her bedside window, she could no such thing—the burden of being crushed underneath the massive weight of her guilt didn't allow her to sleep, much less entertain the idea of acting with such defiance. Defiance implied _pride_ , something that was scarce within her.

How could she feel anything other than shame—self-loathing, even—after what she had just done? In one fell swoop, spurred by her insecurities, she had managed to ruin her entire family's night _and_ run out a perfectly capable babysitter, someone who could've done well without an angry, spiteful she-beast getting up in her face and chewing her out for daring to commit the "sin" of proving that Lori Loud wasn't all that was cracked up to be.

She was sent to bed by her parents shortly afterwards, the promise of harsh discipline buzzing in her head all the while; that sickly feeling of foreboding from her upcoming punishment, however, fell by the wayside as another crushing wave of dread slammed into her, knocking her off her stride and aligning her vision towards what was _really_ important:

Lincoln, in all his furious indignation, was absolutely right.

The fact that he _was_ didn't quite have an effect on her until now, long after the immediate ramifications of her actions had sunk in—when she ran out of the house in tears, she was more focused on the fact that her only brother most likely hated her instead of grasping the real meaning behind his scorn.

But now? She could only submit to the truth, the fact of the matter that she denied aloud but knew in her heart to be true. She _was_ jealous. She _was_ afraid. She _was_ paranoid. But most importantly, she was _wrong_. Poor Carol Pingrey had to pay the price for her insecurities, taking stripes upon her back just for doing her job and doing it better than Lori could ever do.

Her authority, something that she fell into being granted with because of her status as first-born, was all she had to measure up against her vastly superior siblings. Lily was the only one that Lori felt was the exception, but only because she was a baby. Unlike her, she _had_ an excuse to be a blank slate.

But as for Lori herself? Against Lincoln's ingenious drawing and storytelling, Lynn's enviable athleticism, Luna's musical prowess, Luan's comedic proficiency, Lola's polished pageantry, Lana's useful fixing and plumbing, Lisa's prodigious genius, Lucy's mastery of creative writing, Leni's talent at clothes designing…compared all of that, she was _nothing_.

What did she have to her name? What could she reflect on with pride? What could she truly call her own? A first-place spelling bee trophy she won back in the third grade? A few honor roll certificates? The ability to play a half-decent game of golf? Overall, anything she could call a "talent" or an "achievement" was complimentary, almost obligatory; so, she could spell "oxymoron" better than most students her age at the time, get a few more A's than usual here and there, and not completely suck at a backswing. Big deal.

It had taken its toll over the years, her envy. It wasn't easy growing up, looking on as each successive sibling found their "it", that special something about them that made them shine brighter than she could ever hope to do. All she could do to bolster up her ill-gotten self-esteem was pushing other down, convincing herself and anyone who would listen that her family (namely her siblings) actually needed her, an inferior, half-baked product before the line of complete, talented "somebodies" took center stage and overshadowed her.

But her delusions and lies could only carry her for so long; all it took was one day, just one opportunity for her to possibly be dethroned from her seat upon high, to set her off and act in the most despicable, self-centered way imaginable. And the worst part was, what she had done yesterday was _far_ from a first—why, if not for her and her pettiness, Leni would have her driver's license by now.

Carol was right to call her a monster, though she spoke more truth than she realized. She wasn't only a monster for hurting Lincoln and constantly glorifying herself at the expense of others…

She was a monster for fighting her destiny for so long. She had been dealt her hand at birth. Who was she to buck the system, doing so with the implication that the ends justified her horrid means? She had her entire childhood to come into her own; her need to get her siblings to need her, and her pursuit of such a need, was just a distraction to keep the bitter taste of failure out of her mouth.

And even now, now that she had decided to just come to terms with her inferiority, Lori lamented the fact that she _still_ had the gall to be envious of them, as if her jealousy was justified in the face of all of her crimes.

But it wasn't. It _never_ was. She was just a petty, worthless loser and when her anxious mind—heavy with regret— finally allowed her to rest, she didn't feel like she would forget that after a single night's sleep.

* * *

Lori supposed she was just a creature of habit, after all, a slave to her pathetic tendencies. Why else would she be here, sobbing her eyes out as her anguished, pitiful cries muffled into her pillow?

It wasn't as if Lynn was wrong; she _was_ a freak. Not just for hurting Lincoln but for thinking, instinctually or otherwise, that she deserved to be pitied by making a show of her misery like this. Just like with Lincoln the night before, instead of owning up to her true self right there on the spot, she ran away and cried like a whiny toddler who couldn't have her way.

And if anything, she should've been _grateful_. Yes, Lincoln wasn't there to hear her apologize out of scorn, and Lynn wasn't too bothered about sparing her feelings, but at least they were the only two to show her contempt in such a way. A few of her siblings shot her harsh, cold stares while the others, to her surprise, actually looked like they were open to the idea of forgiveness.

So why, why did she have to be here _again_? She, once again, got a slap on the wrist compared to what she thought that _true_ justice looked like. But no, she just _had_ to sulk and moan because her stupid "widdle fweeings" got hurt, instead of counting her blessings that her family hadn't decided that they had had enough of her and…and…

"Lori?"

The sordid thought of…whatever Lori's brain was going to conjure up next, evaporated like smoke when a voice, _her_ voice, called out to her from outside of her locked bedroom door.

"Lori, it's me."

Peeling her face off her pillow, Lori sniffed and rubbed at her eyes and cheeks, smearing off a slab of tears and runny makeup on the back of her hand. She gave a fierce glare at the door, hating just how inevitable this was.

 _Of course,_ it was her. It had _always_ been her. Lori knew better then to completely count Leni out on matters of sound judgment, but it looked like she was still slow to realize that her big sister was a lost cause that wasn't worth her precious time.

"Please open the door." Her plea was somewhat faded this time, her insistence drowning in the desperate sadness her words were marinated in. "I wanna help you."

Lori promised herself that she _would_ help, help by leaving her be and not waste her life away by dedicating herself to a patch job of broken feelings that weren't any better whole than they were in tatters.

And that required her, in another move that'd only amplify her guilt, to be a little unpleasant.

"Go away, Leni," Lori said, her voice wavering despite the forcefulness she tried to project.

"But I-"

" _Now_. I don't need to talk to anyone right now."

Lori could only imagine how hurt Leni must've looked on the other side of the door; her head was probably hanged in shame, the corner of her mouth twitching as her eyes began to well up. Her sullen response certainly helped make that visual more perceptible in her mind's eye.

"O-okay," Leni replied and Lori wouldn't allow herself to not be put off edge until she heard the shuffling of feet carrying off into the distance, followed by the few minutes of silence to ensure that, yes, Leni was truly gone.

But it didn't take long for her longing for solitude to be intruded on again, this time with a hardy knock on the door and a voice that Lori knew better than to defy.

"Open up, Lori."

And open up, Lori did. It took her longer than she thought her father had patience for, what with how it felt like she was dragging lead by her legs as she slowly got up from her bed, but she found no sign of exasperation on her father's face.

A sinking feeling, one that she felt lodge down her throat with a hard gulp and hit rock bottom in the pit of her stomach, was given not to her father but to who he had with him—after everything that just happened, it was no surprise that having Lynn so close to her, especially with her hardened, defiant scowl on her face, would do the trick in making her feel like she just swallowed a bucketful of rocks.

"Lynn has something she wants to tell you," Dad said, giving Lynn a gentle nudge towards Lori.

All the while, their eyes never broke away until Lynn bowed her head slightly and squeezed her eyes shut. It was almost painful for Lori to look at—she clearly didn't want to go through with what their father had clearly coerced her into doing against her wishes.

"Look, I'm sorry I called you a freak, okay?" Her "okay" was carried with snippy bitterness, leaving no doubt that her apology was far from sincere. "I went too far."

Then, as if to gain her footing and take back her dignity, she suddenly looked up and shot Lori a withered glare, the ferocity in her eyes not nearly as fiery as they were when she decried her earlier. "I'm still mad at you for what you did to Lincoln, though."

" _Lynn_."

Lori's reply to her father's chastisement was instant, not a second thought spared. "It's alright, Dad," she said, doing her best to mollify both parties. "She should be allowed to hold onto that. I deserve it for ruining everything."

She must've done a bang-up job at looking like the victim (how predictably pathetic can you get?) because instead of her father simply leaving it at that, he instead looked upon her with pity.

"Lori, you didn-"

"Yes, I did." She wasn't about to have her _father_ be webbed in her unintentional deception. "You'd literally be lying through your teeth if you said otherwise."

Her tone conveyed finality, no hope of being convinced with undeserved sympathy or glib sentiments. Her father must've sensed that as well, as he left the matter closed with a heavy sigh. Lori guessed that Lynn wasn't all that thankful for her defense, given how she seemed more interested in glaring at the floor. Her concentration was broken when her father placed a hand on her shoulder, coaxing her to looking up at him.

"Lynn?"

Lynn was quick to reply. "Yeah?"

"I want to speak with Lori alone."

He jerked his head towards the hallway, indicating the haste in which he wanted Lynn to "amscray". It wasn't as if she needed a nudge in the right direction, Lori surmised. She didn't need to read Lynn like a book to know that she thought she was better off being anywhere but here, saying words that she didn't really mean. Sure enough, right before Lynn walked away, she looked over her shoulder to give Lori a dirty look before she shuffled into her room.

* * *

Just like the night before, Lori had a seat at the edge of her bed while her father had an arm around her shoulders as he sat next to her. She did her best to puff herself up, put on a show of respectable resolve in the face of her inner turmoil. Even so, she couldn't bring herself to look her father in the eye, her shame not allowing her to appreciate her father's loving gaze.

"Look, Lori, I get that you don't feel proud of yourself right now," Dad said, taking a short pause to decide his words, "but that doesn't mean that you have to beat yourself up for nothing. What's done is done; the best thing to do now is to learn from your mistakes."

She knew what he meant, but he didn't know what _her_ definition of "learning" was; last night wasn't the _only_ time where she considered her bland uselessness in the family after her selfish, heedless pursuits cost her family a hefty price to pay. Unlike before, though, now it…it really _stuck_ with her.

"I have learned, Dad," Lori said, watching the clouds slowly drag across the light blue expanse of the sky. "I most _definitely_ learned."

Her words weren't reciprocated with prying, questioning about the underlying meaning behind her admittance. Instead, the arm around her shoulders brought her closer, a hug that she could hardly feel.

"Good," Dad said. "But there's something else I want to get across to you. I, uh, hope you don't take it the wrong way."

Lori felt herself tense up from the ambiguity of his statement, though she couldn't understand why she'd need to.

"Rita and I are…a bit concerned," Dad said. "Truth be told, we were more worried than angry with what you did yesterday, so much so that once you went to bed yesterday, we both did a little talking…"

He scooted back and turned Lori's head towards him, wanting his daughter to give him her undivided attention.

"And we think it'd be best if you went to go see a therapist. It's not like we think you're crazy or anything; we just thought that you'd like to talk to someone about what made you so uptight and…well, different last night."

Ah. _Now_ Lori knew why her father had approached her with this so delicately, prefacing his statement by telling her that she hoped that she "wouldn't take it the wrong way". With therapy came a stigma, the idea that the person taking it was helpless… _weak_ , even. Truthfully, long ago, Lori had considered going to some kind of counselor or therapist, but she rendered those thoughts as foolish flights of fancy.

What could positive thinking and medication possible fix? Everything that Lincoln, Carol, and Lynn had said about her was true; she had her whole life to literally see that for herself. How was an overpriced treatment plan supposed to change who she was? She supposed she could be less jealous and remorseful about getting the short end of the stick at birth, but that would essentially be the same thing as paying out of pocket for someone to teach her how to lie and manipulate her into finding contentment with her squalid lot in life.

And Lori was done with lying; she couldn't afford to and neither could her family. The truth was, they didn't need her because there was nothing about her that was commendable or special to lean on. Her firstborn privileges were only a matter of her being handed responsibilities that her siblings were more than capable of handling themselves.

But in her contemplation, Dad must've confused her deep-thinking for indecision, for he hastily added, "You don't have to give us an answer now, okay? Just think about it."

Lori said nothing. She just looked back at the window and continued to peer through, this time without the aim of fixating her gaze on anything in particular. Just then, her father spoke up.

"You know your mother and I love you, right?"

 _How_ he could feel that way was anyone's guess. But Lori didn't feel like she had any strength left to object, so she settled with a passive, little nod.

"And whether you believe it or not, Lynn and Lincoln love you too. Just give them time to settle down, and I guarantee you that they'll come around to forgiving you."

Again, she just outwardly accepted her father's words with a little nod. His next words, however, earned her attention as she willingly looked back at him:

"Now, uh, here comes the hard part about all of this. We're gonna have to talk about how you're going to be grounded for the rest of the school year."

* * *

Lori had to remember as she walked through her school's crowded hallways on Monday morning, weaving past students and the cacophony of energetic conversation, that she was doing this for Carol's sake but more importantly for Lincoln's sake.

Everything about her plan of action as stupid; there was no way that Carol wanted to see her, let alone start off her school day by talking to her before they had to go to first period. The last look she saw on Carol's face before she ran away in shame was disgust. She was well acquainted with that look lately, given how Lincoln hadn't been pulling any punches with her lately—it was if he made it his mission to show her, whenever she would try to approach him, that she was out of his good graces in the worst way.

' _Can't blame him, either,'_ Lori decided in her head without considering lenience for her own sake.

Her tentative steps led her to where she felt she needed to be; it was a good thing that Carol had her back turned to her, her focus spent on fiddling about with the innards of her locker, or else she probably would've sprinted off like a frightened gazelle upon seeing Lori approach her. Her lack of "eyes in the back of her head" gave Lori the courage to venture closer, stopping when she was about a foot away from her.

She needed to act fast now; there was no telling when the bell would ring and they'd have to go their separate ways.

"H-hey, Carol."

The greeting, though barely spoken above the volume of a timid whisper, was evidently potent enough to paralyze Carol on the spot.

Well, not _entirely_ ; she could see her shoulders tensing underneath her blouse and her knuckles on her right hand, the hand holding the locker's door, turning white.

"Uh…Car-"

"What do _you_ want, Lori?"

Her sour tone pierced through her belly, her body overwhelmed with waves of nausea. Still, she stood her ground on her wobbly legs.

"Can…we talk?"

Carol's reply was just as scathing as the last was. "What for?"

"It's just that…I-I have something important to say."

In one swift motion, one that made Lori flinch back in surprise, Carol pivoted around—her expression was almost tailor made to make Lori feel smaller than she already was.

"What, you didn't get enough licks in?" she said, her voice taunting despite the harshness it carried. "Still got a few more names you wanna call me?"

Lori shook her head, taking her rebuking in stride. "I'm not here to chew you out, Carol. I'm done with that."

But Carol didn't seem impressed, at least not enough to not continue. "No? That's not it, huh? Well, maybe you wanna take the opportunity to wring my neck with your bare hands; you clearly wanted to do that, didn't you?"

Against her better instincts, Lori took a step forward, as if she wanted the sincerity of her wishes for no harm to be seen better from a different angle.

"No, Carol, it's not like that," Lori said with exertion that bordered on authoritative.

"Then what i-"

"I'm sorry!"

Her outburst did the trick in startling Carol, as well as a few other students as they walked by. Lori could feel their eyes glued to them, watching intently to see how the situation would carry on and perhaps finding humor at the misfortune that they could sense—surely, it must've been quite a sight to see a "queen bee" like her so meek and downtrodden.

"I'm…sorry," Lori said, despite feeling ill at ease with all the attention she was getting. "For everything. I'm sorry for not trusting you. I'm sorry for saying all those nasty things about you. I'm sorry for wanting to hurt you. I'm just really, _really_ sorry. Everything I've ever thought about you was wrong, the way I treated you was way out of line, and I shouldn't have made your job difficult because I was jealous you were doing it better than I've done in my entire life."

Even after all of that, Lori couldn't imagine that Carol was moved to act in a way that gave her pardon, which is why she continued with, "And you don't have to worry; I don't expect you to forgive me. I don't deserve it."

Out of everything that was said, that got Carol to finally speak her mind on the matter.

"That's the smartest thing you've ever said to me," she said, folding her arms as Lori winced from that remark. "Is that it, then? That's all you wanted to say?"

Lori didn't need a cue card to know that Carol was running out of patience, and she rushed out her final bid for attention.

"No. It's not," Lori assured. "You and Lincoln have something special; please don't let what I did to the both of you ruin that. He really misses you, Carol. He hasn't spoken to me since Friday, but I know he wants to see you again. So, if you…"

She shrunk away and held the back of her neck with hand, feeling a deep sense of shame in what she was about to ask—despite her feeling it was for the best, she had to carry the fact that she was asking for Carol to step out of her comfort zone by having anything to do with her, even if it would be in a remote sense.

"Well, if you wanna come over and hang out with him, I really think he'd-"

" _No_."

Lori balked, almost petrified by what her ears had heard. She knew she messed up, but to have done it… _this_ badly, to the point where Carol thought that her newfound bond with Lincoln wasn't worth it?

Her pounded against her chest painfully as her throat constricted, allowing just enough air to pass through to keep her alive but not enough to steady her racing nerves.

' _No…n-no, she can't!'_

"No, Lori," Carol affirmed, as if she could detect Lori's urge to question her. "I'm not going anywhere near Lincoln as long as you're around. Do you really expect me to trust you after the way you flew off the handle? You hurt Lincoln _just_ because I was hanging around him."

' _You can't! PLEASE!'_

Lori could only wilt like a dried flower, the sting of tears plunging into her eyes. "But…b-but-"

She was cut off with the harsh sound of her locker slamming shut as Carol turned around to do so.

"I'm not risking it, Lori. I'm protecting him _and_ myself by staying far, _far_ away. I want nothing to do with him, and I especially don't want anything to do with you. So, if that's all you wanted to say to me, you can be on your way. We're done here."

Carol didn't get very far; it took all but two small steps for Lori to rush forward and latch her hand around her shoulder.

"Don't walk out on him, Carol!" she begged, rivulets of tears dripping down her face, along with a runny stream of mucus from her left nostril. "Please don't do this!"

Carol glowered icily and yanked the binding appendage off. "We're done, Lori!" she shouted.

Without sparing her another glance, Carol stormed off, leaving Lori behind to sink to her knees and wail. No one, who bothered to give her more than five seconds of their attention before going about their business, came to her aid...

Not that she would've felt like their pity _wouldn't_ be wasted on her, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

Nothing.

The sharp, smoldering aftertaste of the hot coffee lingered in the back of Lori's throat, the energizing kick doing nothing to perk her up after a hearty gulp. She slunk in her chair, sighing as she watched the tiny wisps of hot steam slowly rising from her mug—she had to strain her bleary, baggy eyes a little since the unlit kitchen made her pursuit a little difficult, though the early Monday morning sunlight shone through the windows just enough for her fixation to not be entirely impossible.

Another sigh dragged from her throat, this time in response to the stinging realization that, of course, this wasn't going to work—two whole weeks of trial and error should've told her better than to labor in vain.

She didn't know what to call "this", the sensation that bored into her body and blanked out her mind with utter exhaustion—even sneaking out of bed to do this felt like a chore, as if her muscles were caked to the brim with poison that drained her of energy from the tiniest of exertion. The most puzzling part of her lethargy was that it didn't make a lick of sense; or at least, it  _shouldn't_ have made sense.

It couldn't have been in response to sleep deprivation; if anything, she was getting  _too_  much rest lately. And yet, for the past few weeks, she still found her body fumbling about on autopilot after another long day of school nearly crushed her into dust—it took her every ounce of her mettle just to stay on her feet for two hours after drunkenly staggering through the front door. Despite distinctly remembering the face of her alarm clock reading "5:29 PM" before her mind wiped and carried her off to another dreamless sleep, she felt as if she hadn't gotten any rest at all—since when was it possible for nearly  _twelve_  hours of sleep to not make a difference?

And so, with no option left but the daft, naive foolishness that a brewing cup of hot coffee would do the trick in making her foggy mind alert, Lori peered into the murky depths of her only hope, gazing upon the ripples of steam that steadily began to die out.

Well, technically, coffee wasn't the  _only_  thing Lori could've done to handle her sleeping problems—it was just the only option that was fair to everyone else.

Going to her parents and requesting that they take her to a doctor?  _'Why, so you can make them waste even more time and money on you? They have enough on their plate as it is; you have no right to make it worse for them just because you can't suck it up.'_

Asking Lisa for some insight?  _'You're not worth her time. She has better things to do than help her useless sister get some shut-eye. When're you gonna stop thinking about yourself already?'_

Even when the coffee suggestion first crossed her mind, she was met with opposition.  _'Other people need it more than you, people who actually make a difference and have something to be proud of. What makes you think you deserve to have any?'_

The guilt could only be appeased (or at least, calmed down to a squall of pressure that blindsided her every now and then, as opposed to an ever-present, miserable maelstrom that loomed overhead) with a compromise to her sin; she'd only make enough to fill half a cup, leaving the lion's share to her wonderful family.

Her slender fingers encircled the mug again, palms unresponsive to the heated ceramic slightly singeing her flesh. Lori grimaced, not to the mug but to the sudden flash of pain that bound the nerves in her calf in a vice grip. She fought through the familiar agony as her trembling hands brought the mug up to her lips, allowing the now-lukewarm coffee to slither down her gullet.

 _Still_  nothing.

* * *

Breakfast time; for most, it was the perfect chance to get the day on the right foot, surrounded by the happy company of loved ones.

For Lori Loud, it was yet another obstacle for her façade to overcome. Her lack of energy made sneaking upstairs after her coffee, pretending to wake up at the beck and call of her alarm clock, showering, and getting dressed a hassle, especially since school days demanded non-stop, fast-paced movement.

And then came breakfast.

It pained her just to smile, contorting her mouth at an unnatural angle to ward off suspicion and blend in with the dining room's lively ambiance. Still, it beat having everyone questioning her apathetic features.

Upholding normal conversation was a little more challenging to handle, though being thrust in the center of attention wasn't impossible to avoid. As long as she kept her head in the sand, making sure not to speak unless spoken to, she'd be in the clear. Lola and Lana were usual the highlights of any meal, their spats diverting the focus away from any interspersed small talk. Today was no exception, to the smallest sliver of relief that Lori could subconsciously allow herself to have.

Things weren't  _always_  this easy, however. From time to time, Leni would (unwittingly) demand her energy with one-on-one conversation that couldn't be passed over with shrugs, nods, and the rare "mm-hmm". Nothing about entertaining her warm smile and infectious fervor could instill her a second's peace, though, turning one of her life's former joys into miserable drudgery.

But her biggest trial was literally under her nose—hard boiled eggs and toast adorned her plate, a glass of water served on the side. The wafts of her food felt more like an unpleasant intrusion through her nose than a pleasure as nausea rumbled in her gut. All she could manage, without feeling the urge to violently retch, were humble bites that she quickly washed down with plentiful sips of water.

Of course, she didn't  _have_  to eat, but there were only so many times that she could "eat later after doing homework" or "skip a meal or two for the sake of a new diet" before she was pushing her luck, and she'd be in the center of probing questions raised by those who were better of being concerned about anyone other than her.

But today…today didn't just feel like another day where her diseased appetite kept her at bay—guilt prevented her from even looking at her food without her throat flaring up from her choking back her sobs.

 _Lincoln_  had made her food for her. She couldn't call it a gesture of exceptional generosity, given how he had prepared the breakfasts of each of her sisters this morning. What  _was_  exceptional, on the other hand, was how he had gone about delivering it. He denied her the privilege of seeing his cute, chipper face and hearing his friendly greeting by placing her meal on the table before she could even think about standing in line along with the others.

Not too long ago, Lynn had come around to finally let bygones be bygones, though her acceptance became apparent by the fact that unlike Lincoln, she could at least look her in the eye without quickly turning away and scowling. It was a bitter pill to swallow to know that he  _still_  harbored animosity for her after all this time.

But then again, who was  _she_  to complain, to imply that she deserved better? She was lucky to be lavished with one of her brother's many talents, despite not having her blessing be offered with the knowledge that she was in his good graces. His selflessness was admirable, much like his aptness for greatness, and Lori couldn't imagine why he couldn't—

"AH!"

Her guilty conscience and sluggishness were drowned out by indignant rage as Lori's sudden outburst was followed by her hissing through clenched teeth, another scathing jolt of flaming cramps crippling her calf. Something, or  _someone_ , had just kicked her right in her sore spot, yet another unexpected ailment that had belabored her lately.

She heard a feeble gasp to her left, and she quickly swiveled her head towards the direction of the sound. Her eyes fell on Leni, whose bright, widened eyes and trembling frown spoke volumes of the fear inspired from her older sisters' furious glare.

"S-sorry," Leni muttered. "I was kicking my legs around and, like, I must've hit you or-"

She let out a squeak as Lori stood up from her chair, slamming her fist down on the table as the fire in her eyes spoke of an imminent, angry retort to her meekness.

"Can you go five seconds, just five seconds  _without_  acting like such a brainless twit?! Why do you always have to…to…"

Words failed her when, in a sudden rush of realization, it dawned on her the atrocity that she had just committed. Leni's sniffling and budding tears only amplified her guilt, paralyzing her just enough to allow her to look around at the faces of her siblings, all of which spoke ill of her.

"I'm…I-I'm sorry, I…uh…"

Her eyes scoured around the room again, her sibling's expressions not aligning with the chance that they didn't think less of her.

 _Especially_  Lincoln's. While her sister's looks ranged from shocked to miffed, his was…stone-faced, as if this was what he expected from someone like her, a jealous, angry freak that aimed to live off the delight from the misery she inspired.

Of course, he was right to think so. What else could be expected from the spiteful runt of the litter?

"I just…I just need to cool off for a second, okay?"

Her departure was allowed without objection. In fact, as Lori trudged slowly to the bathroom, her drained body feeling like cinderblocks were strapped over her back, she could guess that if anything, they  _wanted_ her gone.

* * *

' _Well, look who decided to ruin everyone's day. Just like always, huh?'_

The dimness of Lori's eyes reflected at her in the bathroom mirror, their bleakness only matched by the hopelessness of her situation. They were sure to know something was wrong now. Of course, they'd notice something was amiss now that the "precious cinnamon roll" got hurt. She could suffer in silence all she wanted, but the jig was up now that someone of importance undeservedly entered her crosshairs.

Or maybe…maybe that was just what Lori hoped for, a want for a helping hand beneath her insistence that her family was better off without her problems weighing them down. Beyond the simple act of having her loved ones get to the bottom of her troubled behavior, there was an implication to be considered—if her snapping and yelling at someone over nothing would've raised concern, then that would speak volumes about how much they expected out of her.

But…she knew better than to think that she dashed anyone's ideas about her, crushed any positive expectations underneath the heel of her little performance from earlier. She couldn't judge those shocked faces as anything other than a reflex. It was apparent that reality dawned on them, that because "it was just Lori" they figured that nothing else could be done but to give Leni comfort and their condolences about having to put up with such an awful roommate.

That's why, even after nearly five minutes had passed, not one person bothered to check on her. She knew that if she were Luna or Lucy or Luan, no one would've been kept away with the excuse to "cool off" after blowing up at someone—everyone and their dog would want to know why one of the "perfect ten" lost their cool and do everything in their power to ensure that they weren't turning into the monster that she was.

' _They all hate you, you know. Leni probably hates you the most.'_

It was that thought that brought her to tears.

* * *

Though Leni found herself caught up in the lunch rush, her own thoughts dictated the most of her attention. Walking and chewing gum at the same time might've been a bit of a handful for her but weaving through a crowd of bustling students while thinking about her older sister was a walk in the park.

She chose to trust Luna's advice and leave Lori alone to let her calm down. With hindsight now in play, though, she had reason to believe that perhaps, she was better of leaning on her own instincts—at least if she took the chance to reconcile with Lori before leaving the house, the ride to school wouldn't have been surrounded with so much awkward tension, enough to make any brief eye contact between them almost physically painful.

But ensuring smooth sailing from home was just the tip of the iceberg; Leni had other concerns, apprehension about Lori's well-being. She had reason to believe that Lori's outburst couldn't be passed off as an isolated incident that wasn't hinged on worrying observations she'd been noticing lately…

* * *

Leni's heart sank with disappointment when she spotted Lori's usual eating spot from a distance…

But no Lori in sight. Though she saw familiar faces, people who could point out where her sister could be hanging out right now, it didn't match the ease of confronting her right there and then. Still, she couldn't make a fuss, as if she were given a bag of sour lemons to deal with. Though she only had brief interactions with Lori's friends, she had no reason to believe that they'd reproach her.

And so, she made her move, closing in on the two girls who were too caught up in their conversation to notice Leni until she took a seat across from them.

"Hi, Whitney," Leni said to the girl with curly blonde locks before turning her attention to the girl with short brown hair. "Hey, Dana."

Whitney gave back the greeting in kind. "Hey, Leni."

Leni thought she'd be in the clear to cut to the chase after that, but Dana was quick to chime in.

"You're the first Loud that's sat with us in  _quite_  a while," she said, her grin dropped and her shoulders sagged.

Leni didn't know what to make of that sudden shift in expression, nor her words. Whitney's reply didn't offer her any helpful hints.

"Yeah,  _I'll_  say," she added, her tone, scowl, and folded arms suggesting bitterness.

"What'd you mean by that?" Leni asked.

She wasn't met with a response right away. Instead, the two girls looked at each other, as if to silently communicate on how they should proceed. The exchange lasted for only a few seconds, and Dana led the charge with a pacifying, feeble smile.

"Look, Leni, don't take this the wrong way or anything,  _buuuuuut_  we're pretty mad at your sister."

Whitney picked up her fork, absentmindedly twirling it between her fingers. "She's ditched us," she explained, her eyes squinted underneath her slanted eyebrows.

As much as it shamed her to admit it, Leni wasn't all that surprised to hear about someone having issue with Lori—Whitney and Dana certainly weren't the first to have unpleasant sentiments about her lately. The reason, however, begged further explanation.

"Ditched you? For what?" Leni asked.

Whitney's sudden, angry stab of the fork's tines into her Cobb salad startled Leni, though she was apparently too caught up in her emotions to discern her fright and apologize.

"That's just it!" Whitney cried. "We don't have a clue  _why_  she's been ducking us!"

 _That_  was truly mystifying. Even though Leni conceded with the notion that Lori hadn't been her usual self lately, this revelation was far too out of left field for her to accept at face value.

"Are you sure she's avoiding you? Maybe…maybe she just got lost on the way here?" she offered with a shrug.

It was a far-fetched suggestion, and Leni knew it. Just because  _she_  could get overwhelmed by the labyrinth-like structure of Royal Woods High didn't mean that was a vice that Lori shared with her.

By the look of incredulity on Dana's face, Leni could tell that she thought her suggestion just as unconvincing as she did.

"Yeah, I'd buy that if it wasn't happening every single day for  _weeks_ ," Dana grumbled.

"And to make things worse," Whitney added, "she hasn't been answering our calls or texts. I mean, Lori Loud not replying to a text? Since when does  _that_  happen?"

"You'd have to chain her down to keep her away from her phone," Dana said. "Are we expected to believe that we're not hearing back from her just because?"

At this point, Whitney was seething enough for her cheeks to glow red from anger, though she kept her temper under control enough for her to not scream at the top of her lungs.

"Just who does she think she is, anyway?" she griped, her teeth gnashed. "What gives her the right to just blow us off like she can just do whatever the hell she wants? If I had half a mind, I'd…"

All it took was one hardened look from Leni for Whitney to shut her mouth, the stern message of "Quit badmouthing my sister," read loud and clear. She shrunk back and looked off to the side.

"Sorry," Dana said, feeling just as much shame as Whitney. "We didn't mean to rant on her like that."

"Yeah," Whitney added when she gave Leni her attention again. "We got a little too caught up in our emotions. It's just…it's just not the same without your sister around, y'know? I really miss her. I wish she'd tell us what was going on."

By now, Leni's glare had softened, their words going straight to her heart. Nowadays, she could relate to that feeling of loss, even when Lori was literally right next to her. Although some of Lori's freedoms were restricted because of her punishment, her parents hadn't left her without the chance for the two of them to go out to the mall on the weekends, just as long as all her housework was finished.

And yet Lori always refused to indulge her. It was either "studying" or "napping" that seemed to pull her away from spending just one second with her. And perhaps, if it had ended there, she would've left the matter alone. But it wasn't just trips to the mall that Lori couldn't be bothered with; television marathon watching, nail painting, gossiping, and album listening were also kicked to the curb in favor of her reclusiveness.

And just like on  _that_  day, Leni was told to leave her be whenever she asked if she was alright. Except, instead of declaring that she didn't want to talk, she was quick to insist that "she was just fine" or "there was nothing to worry about". But despite her claims, Leni couldn't help but worry, not after everything she had noticed. Now that there was uncharacteristic anger to deal with, how could she do anything  _but_  fret? There was only so long Leni could trust Lori's words, to believe that she wasn't just keeping up appearances, before she'd have no choice but to push further than her boundaries allowed.

And once she and Lori were alone, that's  _exactly_  what she'd do.

* * *

An assortment of failures laid before Lori, homework papers askew and disorderly on the floor as her bloodshot eyes lazily skimmed over the blankness of each sheet. Thanks to the fact that most of the student body were in the cafeteria for lunch, she wouldn't have to worry about the risk of the solitude of the quiet corner of the fourth floor's hallway being intruded.

' _Why're you even bothering? You'll never catch up.'_

"…yeah."

Lori never reacted to the council of the little voice in her head in the open like that until now—something about the cold bluntness of the statement commanded such respect from her.

It had a point; she had managed to let an entire weekend's worth of homework assignments slip by unfinished. Those past two days were a haze, the clearest bits of memory being of her laying around in her dark room, slipping out of bed to munch on a snack before going right back to the former, or cleaning up the house as the terms of her grounding imposed.

But that only spoke of the meager part of the problem, as she was quick to be reminded of…

' _That's right. Just quit. What're passable grades to someone without a future, anyway?'_

 _That_ was the true difference maker, the separation between a loser like her and a winner like…like Lisa. Lisa would've found a way to turn a situation like this around on its head, but not before she sneered at the so-called "difficulty" that this task imposed. But here she was, sprawled out on the floor and wallowing in the filth of her underachievement, all while she had held onto the dim hope that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

But she had no future, something that she could pursue with the confidence in her abilities to guide her. All she had were foolish ambitions, shots in the dark that reflected nothing of her worth. She deluded herself with the idea that she could be a CEO (and of a major company, at that) just because she could demoralize her siblings into falling in line whenever she had the chance of taking the reins of authority.

And to make matters worse, her parents would be the ones biting the bullet if she selfishly went down that route—the money for a college education didn't grow on trees, after all. They'd have to spare the expenses of their useful children just to give  _her_  a shot at becoming something other than a mediocre footnote. Their sacrifices and their misery would be in vain, all because pathetic little Lori couldn't manage to come into her own.

Heaving a sad sigh, Lori reached for each assignment one by one, crumbling them up into tiny little balls, read to be thrown in the trash. With nothing left to tie her down here, she thought about just…just sitting there and doing nothing. She had the gall to allow her selfishness to get the better of her, letting it suggest that she could've gone to her friends (who were most likely former friends by now, given how they had stopped trying to reach her days ago).

But who was she to weigh them down, to give them grief because of her own? She couldn't be trusted to not bite the head off her pretty, perfect little sister over a petty matter; she shuddered as she imagined what she could to do those she valued less than family. And besides that, it wasn't like she'd be able to enjoy their company even if she tried. There were only so many fake smiles and laughs she could rely on to mask the emptiness, the inability to find joy in any of her recreations—it'd be a fruitless effort to pretend as if somehow, her sorrow would be left behind within the walls of her home.

The fact of the matter was, they didn't need her— _no one_  needed her.

* * *

The real hell always started  _after_  Lori came back home.

She could easily get lost in the shuffle at school; social expectations weren't difficult to avoid. It's not like her peers, specifically her friends, could do much but scratch their heads and wonder what had become of Lori Loud.

But here, in a place where a moment's peace was rare to find? She'd always have to be on high alert, constantly pushing her mind and body to play the part of someone without this…this  _unsettledness_  weighing them down, and as Lori lugged herself up the stairs—her tortuous fatigue nearly shredding her muscles and snapping the bones in her legs in two—she knew she was heading towards the belly of the best, towards the person who had the highest probability of sniffing out her sham for what it was.

Perhaps paranoia was choking out her better senses (or what little remained of them), but Lori had a feeling that Leni was catching onto her. It felt like she was on borrowed time; any day now, Leni would call her out on the real reason why she was always brushing her off, and it'd be all over.

But Leni deserved better closure than that half-assed apology she had muttered in the throes of pure shame. In fact, she deserved so much more than that.

' _A better older sister, for starters.'_

The agony in her body could only deter her from making measured, steady strides, but she willed herself to straighten up her composure once she made it to her bedroom, opening the door and finding Leni just where she expected her to be, on her bed flipping through a magazine.

Her entry was far from quiet, and Lori hoped that as Leni flicked her eyes away from the pages to look at her, she appeared collected enough to not be beset with prying concern. Instead, as Lori slowly approached her, she was greeted with a sight that was just as, if not more, troubling—those eyes gazed at her, the ones that flashed with fear and uncertainty as she mercilessly crucified her earlier.

"Lori, I-"

"I'm sorry."

' _Please, you're never sorry. Eventually, you're just gonna snap at her again.'_

Then, with resolve she didn't know her present state was capable of, she hurried over to her and wrapped her sister in a hug. The comfort such contact would normally inspire was gone, but Lori allowed herself to believe that Leni could at least appreciate it, despite knowing better than to assume that Leni needed to rely on her to feel whole. Sure enough, though, her numb body could feel the faint pressure of Leni reciprocating the hug.

"I'm really sorry for what happened at breakfast," she continued, sadness gripped on every word. "That was uncalled for, and I should've never yelled at you like that."

Leni's reply was faster and far more different than she could've thought, given the severity of her crime.

"I forgive you," she said, her genuine tone doing nothing to mollify Lori's anxiety.

' _She's only saying that out of obligation. She doesn't mean it.'_

And she wanted nothing more than to carry that dread to bed, where she could at least have a chance of gaining some of her bearings with a quick little power nap before dinner—even if the past two weeks proved that that  _rarely_  had a chance of happening.

But she couldn't depart from the hug fast enough to escape Leni's tightened grasp.

* * *

This was it; her time to act was now, and Leni knew she'd have to be careful. Her planned approach was simple and between the extremes of "passive" and "forceful". If she leaned too close to the former, the cycle of assurance would continue, leaving her out in the cold. Doing the opposite would lead to possibly even more disastrous results—if Lori truly was keeping secrets, she'd know to switch up her game to save face, furthering complicating Leni's pursuit.

"Lori?"

"Yeah?"

"If there was anything that was bothering you, you'd tell me, right?"

...

...

"Yeah." She could feel her nodding against her neck and ear. "Yeah, of course."

"Okay."

But despite saying it out loud, Leni still couldn't shake the feeling that things were far from "okay".

This wasn't over yet.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't the soft glow of the Thursday night sky that shone on Lori Loud through her bedroom window. Instead, as she curled up in her blanket, her face was illuminated by the faint, blue light of her cellphone—though, it wasn't pleasure that inspired her to look upon the screen.

The evening stood out from among the others of recent memory. Though her foggy brain and tired body were still demanding sleep, the lull of rest (that would most likely end up being unsatisfying, anyway) didn't overtake her when it usually did. Tonight, her mind had allowed her to stay conscious  _past_  seven o'clock for once, leaving her free to do just about anything for a good little while…

If she cared to do anything but lie in bed, as still as her quiet breath. The Loud house provided a litany of options for anyone to engage in when spare time was available, leaving no one with an excuse to do nothing if that was what they  _truly_  desired. And that was exactly what she wanted, or at least naturally leaned towards without the hope of anything drawing her away from her crushing apathy.

And that's when she heard her phone pinging, the telltale sound of a text coming through. She felt that could bother to see what it was about, though mild curiosity was what carried her forward. Lately, she barely touched her phone, no longer using it recreationally. That didn't mean that she was going to leave it unattended, though; besides, a passing glance over one measly text couldn't hurt.

Wrong.

" _thnkin abut u babe xoxo :)"_

Lori felt her throat tighten and the back of her eyes sting. "Why?" she whispered, her voice tinged with hoarseness.

As if she needed to ask.

' _You know damn well why. You don't have the guts to break it off with him. You keep him wrapped around your little finger because you're too selfish to do the right thing.'_

And she couldn't argue with that, no matter how much a tiny part of her wanted to deny that she was, once again, living it up at the expense of others. Poor Bobby had been tied down to her through her lies of omission; if he knew what kind of monster she truly was, he would've dumped her a long time ago. But she couldn't have that, could she? Her self-serving self couldn't let her precious "Bobby Boo-Boo Bear" leave her, not when she knew, with all her heart and soul, that he was "the one."

Regarding anyone, no matter how good of a person they were, as "the one" was a laughable concept for most, but Lori couldn't see it any other way. Outwardly, she used to purport the idea that her looks and charm could snag just about any guy she wanted. But she knew better than to actually believe that; makeup could only do so much across an ugly canvas.

Then, Bobby flipped her world upside down. She had the gall, the absolute nerve, to regard his first approach as "stalker-ish" and creepy out loud, just to save face; sure, most girls could afford to think such things about a guy who broke into their locker to stuff brownies in it, but Lori had no reason to deny that such a sweet guy like Bobby expressing love to her, no matter how he chose to do so, was one of the best things to ever happen to her.

He had to be "the one"; she couldn't see anyone  _else_  being smitten by such a wicked, depraved creature of no value.

But despite knowing that he could do better, that she could've done him a kindness by turning him down and pointing him in the direction of someone who deserved his attention, Lori latched onto him like a leech, always taking but never giving back. She could've been inspired to turn around, to at least attempt to be the kind of woman that the noble, generous, thoughtful, wonderful Bobby Santiago deserved, but why would she do that when she could have her cake and eat it too, to destroy the lives of her loved ones while he lavished her, treated her like a princess?

And what made it worse was that she had the unabashed audacity to act as if his life needed to revolve around hers, just because  _she_  couldn't fathom the idea of being without him. His new life in Chicago should've been a breath of fresh air, the chance for him to move away from the biggest mistake he had made in his life by, perhaps, settling down with someone else. She could've co-signed the idea, even presented it to him when she dragged poor Lincoln over there to give him a piece of her mind.

But no, she had to weigh him down and muddy up his new future by oh-so "reluctantly" agreeing to follow him to college, trailing behind him like a puppy. And of course, that meant that her parents would have to fork over a boatload of money to support a venture that wouldn't pay dividends, just so she could have some emotional stability.

' _You truly are disgusting, you know that? How many people do you have to screw over before you're satisfied?'_

Not enough, it seemed, since all she could muster the courage to do was ward him off with texts, using the same excuses that she used to keep Leni away. But unlike with Leni, instead of wanting her at an arm's length to keep her from being weighed down by her problems, she couldn't say that was the same for Bobby. With Bobby, even if her love for him was submerged under gallons of murky, black insensitivity, there was still a spark of longing…emotion… _feeling_. Beyond simply wanting to keep the man of her dreams by her side, she couldn't bear the thought of severing away the only thing that made her feel alive, as if she wasn't just fumbling about aimlessly as life slipped by her.

But that wouldn't be fair. She knew what she had to do. She had the power to tell him the truth about her and set him free, free to live a life away from such a festering, worthless cancer like her. It was so simple to do and yet…and yet…

Lori sighed, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears at bay as she slipped her phone under her pillow. She'd be going to bed a selfish coward.

 _Again_.

* * *

_**THE NEXT DAY…** _

* * *

Sluggish and all, she was still receptive to anxiety; Lori knew that well enough, but  _this_  was far different from dreading her family figuring out her state of mind and body. She and Mr. Lewis, her history teacher, were always on amicable terms with each other, but she knew what to expect after after he pulled her off to the side before class could start, and she could take her seat—in short, it  _couldn't_  be good.

"Don't go to lunch after the bell rings," he had told her. "We need to talk."

His tone left no room for her to speculate that, perhaps, his stern tone and measured scowl meant that he had good news for her. But Lori knew better to assume that, especially when she had a pretty good inkling as to what this was all about, anyway.

Lori obeyed and stayed behind after the bell rang, watching as her classmates excitedly shuffled out of the classroom while they chattered excitedly to one another. Her eyes listlessly scanned their happy faces as they departed, envy throttling her as heart ached and longed for the happiness that had long since vanished from her life entirely.

She groaned, gripping her fingers around her temples—it was all she could do to brace herself against the burning flash of shame that engulfed her from the sickening realization that she was, once again, putting her well-being in the limelight.

' _When are you going to get tired of being so selfish?'_

But no sooner had her mind trapped her in miserable contemplation than Mr. Lewis approached her, his withered, wrinkled hand lightly slapping onto her desk—the noise jolted her focus away, and she instantly looked up and locked onto his pale, gray eyes.

"Do you know why I had you stay behind, Lori?" Mr. Lewis asked, asking without leaving the impression that Lori didn't know.

And though his intuition was faultless, he found his student giving him a terse reply that contradicted the nervousness brimming in her eyes and the anxious gaze affixed on her hands as her palms played downward on the desk.

"No, sir," Lori said.

Mr. Lewis frowned. "Well then, allow me to fill you in…"

In a motion swift enough to belie his age, the elderly teacher pulled out a roll of papers from his pocket and lined the sheets on Lori's desk, side-by-side. The swarm of butterflies in Lori's gut traveled to her heart, making it ache and thump brutally against her bones.

"Recognize _these?_ " Mr. Lewis asked.

She most certainly did, but she recognized an imminent terror even worse than an irate teacher wanting to know why she had been neglecting her homework assignments; surely, he would notify her parents about her negligence, and they would demand that she explain herself.

But even with the dizzying thought of such a confrontation pounding in her head, she still had enough wherewithal to spare a feeble nod.

"Then you should know why I'm not very happy with you," Mr. Lewis said. "Lori, you've missed out on five homework assignments in a row." He used both hands to hold up five fingers for emphasis. " _Five_. That shouldn't be happening with someone like you."

He pulled his hands back as his arms folded across his chest. Lori's active, wringing hands sat in place as they clawed into jittery fists, her fingers as clenched as her teeth—it was all she could do to keep herself from mewling pathetically at being cornered like this.

"And what's more, I've recently caught you dozing off in class  _several_  times," her teacher continued, his disclosure churning bile fit to lurch out her throat in a violent stream, "even as early as when the class begins. You're usually far more attentive than that."

But even as his face softened in concern, her agony remained. All she could do was meditate on lies that she could employ to keep his inevitable pressing of the matter from sapping away what was left of her ebbing resolve.

"Can you see why I'm so concerned now?" Mr. Lewis asked as he took the papers back. "You're one of my brightest students, Lori; again, this level of irresponsibility isn't like you. If there's something going on at home or any other personal issue you need to get straightened out, I can always help you, and there are other teachers and guidance councilors that'll do the same for you. Whatever's bothering you, it's best to get the problem solved before your grades slip away from you completely."

Amid her plotting, she grimaced at such a foolish proposition. Councilors and teachers guided and fostered futures, not hopeless cases like little 'ol her. And what would come if she told them everything, every sordid detail about how she held others down to make her blight worthlessness manageable? Surely, they'd cast her out and decry her as a stain against the school, her community, and society as a whole; who else but a pitiful brute deserved to bear such a dishonor?

"So, is there anything you want to tell me? Anything that you need me to do for you at all?" she heard her teacher ask.

Lori shook her head, her "truth" already prepared. "No, Mr. Lewis," she said, bowing her head. "I'm…just being complacent. I'm sorry."

She couldn't see how he took her so-called admittance, but his answer placated her curiosity.

"Well, if that's really the case, I'd advise against continuing down the path you're going on" he replied sternly. "Even with all the damage your lack of diligence has done to your grade, you can still finish off the school year strong if your turn your attitude around. This is your final year of high school, Lori. I trust you want to end on a high note?"

"Yes, sir," Lori said, her practiced, shamed tone bolstering her act.

After that, she was excused without another word. Her freedom was spent in her dreary corner until lunch was over.

* * *

_**LATER THAT AFTERNOON…** _

* * *

Desperate times called for desperate measures as far as Leni was concerned.

This might've been a tad extreme, given how she was hinging her present actions off a strong hunch rather than anything objectively solid, but she couldn't buck off the feeling that despite her insistence, Lori wasn't being honest with her.

With her back against the wall, the only option Leni felt she had was getting her parents involved.

It had been a few days since Leni had confronted her sister about her feelings, and she could only pretend to be content with her assurance for so long. She no longer pressed her, opting to watch her from afar and pick up on any alarming shifts, any discrepancies that could only spell disaster and a need for a direct intervention.

But Lori, if she truly was being aloofly discrete on purpose, was a tough nut to crack. Yes, she was still keeping her distance from her friends and studying (if Leni could trust that assertion) more rigorously than ever, but even if it meant that she wasn't socializing to her as much as she used to, Lori still seemed capable of functioning normally.

At least, she did for the  _most_  part. Just what was it about Lori that put Leni on edge? Her distant stares? Her persistent retreats into solitude? Those times, at night, that she could've sworn she heard her sister's muffled sobbing from underneath her blanket as they laid in bed? Whatever it was, she couldn't take the acquiescent road any longer, not when her worried mind refused to be put to rest—if she were in her shoes, Lori would've done put her foot down ages ago and it was high time she did the same.

Once Mom and Dad came back from work, Leni was on the move, walking towards their bedroom with only a meager portion of apprehension weighing her down. She was a little worried that her worries were all for nothing and everything about her plan would only get Lori more attention than she was comfortable with, but she didn't allow that possibility to halt her steps.

In no time flat, her parent's bedroom stood before her. Her fist lifted to the door, ready to knock.

Last chance to back out.

Last chance to give Lori her space.

Last chance to possibly leave her sister in the dark.

Leni's brow arched downward as she squared her shoulders.  _'Not a chance.'_

"Mom? Dad?" Leni called as she gave the door a few light knocks.

She was met with silence, an oddity that only inspired her to try again.

"Moooom? Daaaaad?" Leni called again, this time putting more vigor behind her knocks.

This proved to be effective as, instead of silence, she heard nervous…giggling? She couldn't ponder that peculiarity for long as she was snapped out of her thoughts by her mother's voice.

"Uh, j-just a second, Leni!" Mom said, sounding surprisingly out of breath for such a short walk to her door.

"We'll be right out!" Dad added as breathlessly and hastily as his wife.

Leni shrugged. She supposed it wasn't their fault they got winded so easily; she wouldn't say it out loud, but they  _were_  getting up in age.

* * *

Knocking was the easy part. Finding the right words while her parents waited for her to speak? That was going to be tricky.

After inviting her inside and taking a seat on their bed, Mom and Dad turned from warm, caring caretakers into a somewhat intimidating pair of obstacles. The ball was on Leni's court now, and it was up to her to get her urgency across without making it seem as if they  _needed_  to directly intervene and possibly intrude in her sister's business—after all, she was doing this based on a hunch, and all she really needed were trustworthy confidants, anyway.

"What'd you need, kiddo?" Dad finally asked, breaking the awkward tension that kept Leni's mouth shut.

Leni swallowed and rubbed her elbow, the beginning of her response slipping past her lips. "It's…it's about Lori."

From the look on her face, Mom looked like she was picking up on her daughter's anxious vibes. "What about her, sweetie?" she asked, gazing at her with attentive eyes.

"It's just…I mean, I…um…"

Leni bit down on her lower lip and looked down at the floor, quickly losing steam in her ability to not cause panic.

And then, in a flash, the memory of Lori's words—her hollow-sounding assurance that she was fine and that there was nothing to worry about—lodged into her brain like a spear. The sharp blow reshaped her focus and unnerved her; if this was truly a false alarm, and she only made things worse by being a silly worrywart, then she'd simply have to ask everyone involved for their forgiveness.

She looked back at her mother. "I think something's wrong with her," Leni said without a hint of uneasiness in her voice.

It was Dad's turn to regard the situation with concern on his face. "What'd you mean by that?" he asked.

Leni sighed and turned to her father. "I…don't really know," she admitted, "but it's almost like she's a whole different person. She never wants to hang out with me anymore; we haven't done anything together in weeks. And a few days ago, I found out that she's been avoiding all her friends at school."

And just like that, silence reigned again as Mom and Dad were left to wonder contemplate what Leni had just said. She was grateful that that was all  _they_  were doing, and she supposed that she owed it to her omission—had she included the morning where Lori had lashed out at her, she would've heard an earful from Mom and Dad and if Lori really was in trouble, Leni couldn't imagine that she needed her parents chastising her.

"Well," Dad finally asked, "have you talked to Lori about why she doesn't want to spend time with you anymore?"

Leni nodded. "Well, yeah," she said. "She says that she needs to study or catch up with some sleep, but, like, she  _always_  needs to sleep or study."

Leni felt her throat swell and her eyes water. "I wanna believe her, I-I really do, but a part of me thinks that she's trying to shut me out from...something."

Even though she wanted to stay level-headed, it took nothing short of the thought of Lori, wallowing in the bleak depths of some mysterious, personal crisis to cause tears to trickle out of her eyes, little pearls of clear blue rolling down her cheeks before they blotted the carpet below.

Mom was quick to stand on her feet and embrace her daughter in a tight hug, cradling her head with one hand and stroking her head with another.

"Shhhh, it's okay, Leni," she whispered. "It's okay."

It took Leni about a minute before her tears were spent and she was ready to talk again. Regardless, Mom didn't let go. Meanwhile, Dad joined her side and put a hand on her shoulder. Leni brushed away her tears and gazed at her father, unsure of what he was going to do in response to her emotional outburst.

"Look, Leni," Dad said, giving Leni a smile, "I know that it looks like Lori doesn't want to hang out with you out of spite, but I think you should respect that she's trying to make mature decisions. Would Lori 'always' need to rest or study if she didn't think it was worth it? Or would she stop hanging around friends if she thought they were worth her time?"

As much as that made sense to Leni, she still couldn't help but grimace at the implication that her father presented. After all, she was Lori's friend, too, wasn't she? Did that mean that  _she_  wasn't worth Lori's time?

But of course, she thought better. After all, it was still crystal clear that Lori still cared about her; she wouldn't have apologized to her for yelling if she didn't.

"I…guess not," Leni said, decided not to bring that point up, as if Dad meant to offend her.

Mom backed away a bit, but she still held close as she cupped her hand over one of Leni-s tear-stained cheeks.

"Good," Mom said. "I agree with your father, and I'm happy to see that you're thinking positively. I understand that you might feel a little worried about your sister, but I really think she's just trying to get the best grades that she can, and she doesn't want to be weighed down by distractions."

Mom's eyes widened as she immediately recollected her last words.

"N-not to say that  _you're_  a distraction or anything!" Mom said, grinning sheepishly. "It's just that-"

Leni laughed as she held a hand up, the gesture getting her mother to stop babbling apologetically.

"It's okay. I understand," she said before she hugged both her parents. "Thanks, Mom and Dad."

Her gratefulness was genuine; she really need this, a new perspective that brought her better clarity. It wasn't as if she wouldn't worry about Lori, but instead of deciding that there was something she was keeping from her, all she could do was hope that Lori wouldn't push herself too hard—she was amazing, but even her big sister had limits.

Before she could pull away to leave, though, Dad stopped her.

"Leni?" he asked.

He spoke again once he saw that his daughter was giving him her attention.

"Your mother and I have an announcement for the whole family at dinner," he said, an eager grin plastered on his face. "I'm sure you and Lori will both love it, and I'm also sure you that won't have to worry about getting to spend time with her anymore."

And with that, Leni departed with not just solace to keep her tense mind at ease, but a firm belief that she and Lori would get a chance to make up for lost time.

And after everything she had been dreading lately, she couldn't have asked for more than that.

* * *

Usually, the intermittent food fight or gossip took center stage at dinnertime, but Lisa Loud took it upon herself to make sure that wouldn't be happening tonight. Before Rita and Lynn Sr. could disclose their special announcement, their genius daughter had requested that she have the floor to disclose a "scientific breakthrough" that she discovered after supposedly researching about the dietary health benefits of eating copious amounts of ice cream.

And so, with her pointer stick scanning across her formulas and equations—sketched across her chalkboard—Lisa stood in front of the dining room's archway as she finished up the last bit of her presentation, declaring, with as much authority in her voice as she could, "…and that, parental units, is why it is imperative that we be served  _at least_  two bowls of ice cream after every meal."

As Lisa took a bow, Lucy, Lana, Lola, and Lily gave thunderous applauses, their juvenile sensibilities excited at the prospect of eating ice cream every day. Unfortunately for Lisa, her parents weren't so impressed. Sporting a cocky smirk and a raised eyebrow, Rita wagged her finger at her daughter's efforts.

"Nice try, Lisa," she said, her knowing tone immediately silencing the applause and Lisa's belief in her triumph. "I took a nutrition course in college; I know for a fact that ice cream raises  _LDL_  cholesterol, not  _HDL_ cholesterol. Better luck next time."

Lisa scowled. "Dang it," she mumbled, tossing her pointer stick away before she scrambled over to her seat and plopped onto it, folding her arms and puffing out her cheeks.

Lola, who was sitting next to her, offered her sister no consolation.

"See,  _this_  why I said you should've done a PowerPoint presentation," she said, getting an eye-roll for her troubles.

Rita chuckled, standing up from her chair. "Now then, are we done trying to get one over on Mama Loud?"

Lisa squinted angrily and grit her teeth. "Yes," she said, then added in a dark whisper, "For now."

"Excellent," Rita said, then looked to her husband as he stood up as well. "I guess that means we can tell everyone the good news."

At the "mention" of good news, Luan was quick to give her thoughts, though her mischievously hammy smile suggested that she was looking forward to knocking everyone's socks off with a joke.

"Wait, we're not about to have  _another_  sibling on the way, are we?" Luan asked, her jest earning an uproar of laughter from a few of her siblings, though they found Rita's shell-shocked expression to be funnier.

"Very funny, Luan," Lynn Sr. said with a chuckle. "No, your mother's not expecting. The news has to deal with what we're all doing next week."

It took a few seconds for Rita to compose herself, but she was ready to bounce off her husband's statement.

"Lynn and I talked to our respective bosses," she said as she walked over to Lynn Sr. and threw an arm around his shoulder, "and they agreed to give us the days between next Friday and the Friday  _after_  that off."

Lynn Sr.'s grin grew even wider before he added, " _With_  pay,"

"And as you all should be aware of," Rita added, "that's the  _exact_  time frame of Spring break for you kids."

Both Rita and Lynn Sr. looked like they were ready to burst from excitement at this point, their smiles and squirrely bodies promising a proclamation for the ages.

"Meaning," the couple said in unison, "that starting next Friday, the Louds are gonna be livin' it up in Grand Rapids for Spring break!"

They didn't have time to cover their ears before the deafening chorus of excited cheers pelted them, but their grins remained, nonetheless. As parents, nothing made them prouder than knowing that they could provide for their children and make their lives that much better with the opportunity to gain new happy memories.

Both Rita and Lynn Sr. gave their attention to the farthest end of the dinner table, where their eldest children sat. Their hearts were one as joy pumped through their veins—a once downtrodden Leni was looking at her older sister with delight in her grin and hope brimming in her eyes where bitter tears once resided.

As for Lori, though her gaze was on her plate, her modest yet festive smile was enough assurance for them to not assume the worst—admittedly, Leni had given the both a bit of a scare earlier but seeing Lori capable of receiving such good news in stride, like they'd expect a normal, healthy child to do, satisfied their concerns.

Now, all that was left to do was start packing; in a family as big as theirs, getting it started a week in advance was paramount.

* * *

That's it. Just keep up appearances. Smile, ward them off from the cavernous gash in your soul as you bleed dry. Keep it in. Keep everything to yourself.

What else  _could_  Lori do? Explain why she couldn't muster genuine elation at her parent's news? No, that'd only make them worry, and who was she to do that to them, especially now that there was something for everyone to look forward to in a week?

The joy of those perfect little angels wasn't a remedy to her misery, but it'd at least remind her that she had something to fight for, something to preserve by secluding herself underneath excuses and lies.

But…there was something else, some _one_  else. Sure, she had her wonderful family to protect, but what good was her vigilance when three hours away, the man she loved suffered because of her selfishness? Bobby was a treasure, and she had more time with him than someone like her deserved to have. It wasn't enough to feel pain for his bad circumstances, as if that was enough to justify her cowardice.

The call to action had governed most of her thoughts all day, the consequences of such a call boring her sanity with twinges of self-doubt, all bred from the pathetic excuse that she'd be hurting Bobby.

' _Here you are about to have a Spring break of a lifetime while Bobby's out there, working his butt off and being a better older sibling than you've ever been or will ever be. Is that what you call fair?'_

Her fake smile vanished, the burden weighed down by shame and disgust.

' _And you had the gall to think that setting him free would hurt him. I'm surprised you can even sleep at night, let alone look at yourself in the mirror.'_

Before she knew it, her mouth was open as she looked up at her beaming parents. "May I be excused?" she asked, her voice directing all eyes on her as the cheering came to a halt. "I just remembered that I need to finish up some homework."

Mom gave her a peculiar look, glancing down at her daughter's plate. "I guess you can go but are you sure you can't do it later?" she asked. "You hardly touched your food."

Lori shrugged. "I'll eat it later," she said, flashing a weak grin to mollify any possible suspicion.

Without waiting for a proper reply, Lori sauntered away, her steps slowed and fatigued but her attentiveness as sharp as ever—she saw that way Leni looked at her, uncertain and uneasy, before she sat up and made sure to give her a quick little hug on her way out.

Only time would tell if it worked, but all Lori could dwell on was how that hug, just like the one from days before, was dead and cold against her skin.

* * *

' _Well, why aren't you doing it already? End his misery. NOW.'_

Even in the darkness of her unlit bedroom, she had enough visibility to peer into the blank screen of her phone and perceive the forlorn that was carved in her face.

It had been two minutes since Lori slunk into her room—two minutes and yet she dared to be bound by indecision. It shouldn't matter that her limbs were paralyzed, unable to carry out her sworn duty as someone who was supposed to, at the very least, keep her loved ones from enduring her existence—she gave up the idea that she could be better than a monster, but that didn't mean her world had to burn because she got cold feet at the last second.

Finally, the numb fingers of her right hand uncurled from her phone, and she whimpered softly as she looked away. Memory guided her motions as the phone was turned on and Bobby's number was quickly punched in (slowed, delayed movements would've only inspired her horrid baser instincts to pull back "before it was too late).

Her whimpering grew louder, though it was quickly drowned out by the phone humming in her ear. She knew she'd have to brace herself soon but keeping her emotions in check was easier thought than done.

But she'd have to do it soon. It was only a matter of time before Bobby picked up, and she'd have no choice but to—

" _The number you have dialed is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press 1 for more options."_

The breath in Lori's chest hardly expelled, and it swelled painfully against her heart as she heard the * _beep*_ —for just a brief second, she allowed her foolishness to make her believe that she was out of the woods, that Bobby now answering would mean that she wouldn't have to answer for herself.

She sighed. She wasn't just harpy, she was a  _stupid_  harpy. Knowing full well that Bobby didn't deserve to be attached to such a grisly, pathetic image forced her speech, though it began in an awkward stutter.

"H-hey, Bobby. It's…" She groaned at the lump in her throat that bulged in her throat. "…it's, uh, Lori…um, speaking. I, uh, j-just wanted to call you and…"

That vexing lump tightened as she swallowed, and Lori was almost certain that swallowing harder would force it down her windpipe and make her choke—the feeling of nauseous suffocation was already sprouting in the pit of her stomach, and it made her legs quiver.

"This…what we have…" She shut her eyes, as if doing so could keep him from seeing the glistening moistness budding against her pupils. "…it's just not gonna work out, okay I'm sorry, Bobby, but…we have to move on from each other. I know you'll probably be confused, sad, hurt, and maybe even angry when you hear me say this, but I need you to understand that this is for the best."

And then, surprisingly, as if she were just finished enduring the worst of flu shot, her agony had subsided by this point, enough for her to continue without any hinderance. Her voice wasn't even broken anymore, and her view of her stability was no longer jarred with visions of disaster from seeing this through.

Instead, everything about this situation was just like that hug with Leni; her body felt cold and dead, almost cooled with a chill that numbed her brain and swallowed her up in a rush of apathy. It was all too familiar, enough for it to not even register in her mind as something significant—living in this thick, deafening haze was second nature, and not even the thought of being without Bobby Santiago could wake her up.

"Please…don't try to text me or call me back, looking for an explanation," she said, her tone almost bored. "Just trust me; let's just say you're way better off this way. I'm not the person you think I am, and I'm not fit to be around you anymore. I  _never_  was."

She capped off her last goodbyes while she wiped her eyes, the evidence of her former worries brushed aside along with them.

"So…that's it. Goodbye. Thank you for everything."

She immediately regretted those last four words, but only had the prudence to do so  _after_  she hung up. She just  _had_  to sneak that list bit in there, didn't she?

' _Oh yes, thank you Bobby for being available for my ego, for my sense of self-worth as I calmly tear down everything that gets in my way. Thank you for allowing me to deprive your sister of your time, time that you could've spent caring and bonding with her. Thank you for helping me to pretend that I could stand proud on my own merits as someone who was worthy of love and the promise that I could be cherished.'_

She shook her head; she really was repulsive.


	4. Chapter 4

Sunday afternoon brought about ideal condition that not only permitted the children of Royal Woods to run outside and play to their heart's content, but encouraged such rambunctious pleasure—it was if nature herself bid the birds the order of singing a gaily tune that cried out for such an excited bustle to take place.

Best friends Lincoln Loud and Clyde McBride heeded that call, and the two boys soon found themselves directly underneath skies that were even clearer than the field they were presently occupying. By now, it had been about a half an hour since they had decided to take turns swinging at a baseball thrown by the other—they had already burnt out on Frisbee tossing by this point, and Clyde was eager to show his best friend a thing or two about batting.

Once again, metal met ball with a deafening  _*crack*_ —Lincoln was used to having practically every pitch of his brushed aside like it was nothing by now, but he couldn't help but be in awe at watching Clyde in his element. He was so entranced by wonder that it didn't register that Clyde had just smacked a fly ball clear into the air, quickly hurdling towards him, until Clyde cried out to him.

"Heads up, Lincoln!"

Panic was the first thing that assaulted Lincoln's brain, sapping him of all focus. Thankfully, it only took him about half a second to snap out of it and realize that the perfect solution to stopping the incoming missile was literally lying at his feet. Without taking his eyes of the ball, Lincoln crouched down, blindly grasped at his trusty baseball mitt, slipped it on, and outstretched his mitt-wielding arm to embrace the imminent impact.

But soon, it became apparent that the ball's trajectory was off course from Lincoln's hasty calculations, and the boy found himself shuffling about as he tried to get completely underneath the ball. Though the Sun's bright rays made honing in on it difficult, Lincoln was determined to cap off Clyde's impressive feat with one of his own.

When a reachable distance was finally crossed, Lincoln lifted off the ground with a jump as visions of success coached him on.

"Gotch- _y_ _ow_!"

His declaration ended on a startled note instead of a triumphant one—he couldn't have finished with anything else after having the baseball conk him on the shoulder instead of landing in his mitt like he wanted. His landing was fortunately more graceful, though that didn't help the biting sting of the blow from making his shoulder joint and muscles throb. It didn't take long for Clyde to drop his bat and race towards his friend, who was too busy rubbing his hurt shoulder to notice him until he was right in front of him.

"You alright, buddy?" Clyde asked.

Lincoln gave him a pained, sheepish smile through clenched teeth. "Yeah," he said. "I'm good."

Clyde watched in silence as Lincoln favored his shoulder with more rubs for a few seconds. Once he stopped and Clyde was sure that Lincoln was no longer in any pain—or at least a degree of pain that would make his imminent offer foolish—he said, "I can take a crack at catching, if you want."

Lincoln shook his head, his smile reduced to a self-deprecating grin.

"I guess I could," he said, "but I doubt I'll be anywhere close to being as good as you. I'd probably just strike out at least eighty-five percent of the time."

Lincoln thought that his estimation wasn't  _entirely_  bred from doubt in his own abilities—he had always come up short to Clyde in the baseball department, but having a bad shoulder wasn't going to help him measure up any better.

Clyde smiled and gave him a comforting pat on his  _good_  shoulder. "Hey, you never know unless you try," he said.

Lincoln reacted to his consolation with nothing but a shrug and a defeatist reply. "Eh, I dunno," he said. "There are just some things in life that are obvious without having to 'try'."

Lincoln half-expected Clyde to needle him into giving it a shot. Instead, his friend smirked at him and arched up an eyebrow teasingly.

"You mean like how you're gonna eat my dust at 'Astral Death Squad IV: The Dead Arise' when we get back to my house?" Clyde asked.

The nagging pain of Lincoln's shoulder was dampened and his retort to Clyde's cockiness melted away on the tip of his tongue, his gleeful disbelief in Clyde's declaration nipping it in the bud before it could sprout.

"Shut up!" Lincoln cried, a wide grin covering half his face. "How'd  _your_  parents allow to get a game like  _that_?!"

While it was true that Clyde's parents were way less smothering towards their son, that didn't mean that they had completely abandoned their overprotective ways. The fact that they supposedly allowed their son to buy the hottest T-rated game in stores—that featured suggestive themes, infrequent coarse language, and minimal blood—meant that either Mr. and Mr. McBride were making way more progress than Lincoln could've ever guessed was possible or he had to hand his title of the "Master of Convincing" over to Clyde.

"I haven't played it yet, though. They said I could play it as long as I follow up each playing session with a thorough evaluation from Dr. Lopez to make sure I'm mentally stable," Clyde said as he picked up the baseball.

Lincoln chuckled. Ah, now  _that_  sounded like his parents. In any case, now that Lincoln knew that there was such an amazing game just waiting to be played, the prospect of baseball failed to live up to that standard of entertainment.

"Say, if you don't mind, I wanna play it right away," Lincoln said. "All this running around has made me want to just kick back and blast some space zombies into dust."

Lincoln's hopes for hours of mindless, interstellar violence were realized when Clyde, who was on heading over to where his baseball bat and Frisbee laid on the ground, looked over his shoulder and said, "I thought you'd never ask."

* * *

Lincoln had his Frisbee tucked under his arm while Clyde handled the baseball equipment, the load easy to manage because of the trusty duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

It seemed that "Astral Death Squad IV: The Dead Arise" was doomed to be on the brains of both boys for the rest of the day as they walked to Clyde's house. For several minutes on end, they spoke of nothing but that game and all of its violent features. Though Lincoln had no problem contributing to the conversation with just as much enthusiasm as Clyde, he was still taken aback by how much Clyde—someone who tended to be the more squeamish one between the two of them—seemed enthralled by all the blood-splattering gore and viscerally gruesome mayhem that awaited them.

It only dawned on Lincoln about halfway through their travels that  _he_  had exciting news of his own to share. Once he did, the talk of video game shenanigans was put on hold as Lincoln barreled over the discussion by chatting about what he had learned at dinner a few days ago. Though he did his best to recount how his parents had told him and his sisters about their upcoming spring break vacation with as little fervor as possible—as to not make Clyde feel bad about missing out on the experience—it did little to quell the kindling of disappointment that materialized on Clyde's face.

"Man, you're so lucky," Clyde said, his head slightly drooped. "I wish _I_ was doing something cool for Spring break."

Guilt inspired Lincoln to try his hand at consolation as he put an arm around his buddy's shoulders and said, "You could always come with us."

They may not have shared the same last name, but Clyde was the closest thing he had to a brother as far as he was concerned. And now that he brought up the proposal, he couldn't imagine a vacation  _without_  him tagging along for the fun.

But unfortunately, Clyde had other ideas. "Nah, it's a family vacation," he said, shaking his head while flashing a sad smile. "I don't wanna be a third wheel. I'll find something to do to pass the time. I promise."

Lincoln was tempted to convince him again, but he thought better of it when he considered the circumstances. He didn't imagine that it would be impossible for Clyde's parents to pony up enough money to accommodate for their son—he couldn't see  _his_  parents having enough money to spare to take care of Clyde after taking their eleven children into account—but that did fly in the face of what his father seemed to convey when he told them all, in no uncertain words, that it would be the  _Louds_  that would be going to Grand Rapids. He'd have to ask his parents to make a consideration, but he couldn't believe in that possibility enough to do anything but act as if Clyde's exclusion was already set in stone.

"I'll make sure to take plenty of pictures and send them to you," Lincoln said.

Lincoln was certain that, at best, Clyde would appreciate his offer with half-hearted acceptance—overall, it  _was_  pretty meager solace. Once again, however, Clyde seemed intent on defying his expectations at every turn. Instead of a paltry grin, flaunted in an attempt to mask his disappointment, the boy couldn't have seemed happier if he tried.

But if anything, given what Lincoln knew enough about Clyde's present expression—his love-struck grin poised underneath the faraway, ablaze look in his eyes as it gazed off in the distance—the tingles of squeamish disease festering in his gut and agitated exasperation swarming through his bones weren't sensations bred by paranoia.

No, his faithful intuition was telling him  _exactly_  where Clyde's head was, and the thought of it made him groan in misery; he really didn't want to hear about  _her_ right now.

* * *

Once again, Clyde McBride was whisked away to a world of pleasant fantasy, his blissful illusions inspired by his dearly beloved—and just like every other instance of his daydreams of passionate yearning, Lori Loud never failed to make him believe that that she was God's most beautiful creature.

He had Lincoln's proposal to thank for his state of mind. He had no idea what Grand Rapids was like, but the could only imagine that any possible tourist spot or venue of notoriety lacked the majestic splendor that only Lori wielded. But even with his mind thinking such things, he couldn't think of anything better to salve his feelings of loss—over his best friend leaving him for spring break—than pictures of his dearest Lori, whether there were any backdrops that could come close to complimenting to her beauty or not.

His next course of action permitted him to gain charge of his mental faculties long enough for him to ask with burning longing, his voice choked from his airy daze, "Mind taking a few of Lori for me? My Lori shrine could use a bit of sprucing up, and I—"

A quick, cursory glance at Lincoln scalded his nerves like icy, arctic water, and it forced his mouth to clamp shut, his eyes to widen, and for his heart to flutter from a breadth of uneasiness. He didn't know the catalyst behind Lincoln's present mood—personified by his furious scowl furrowed brow, and glare that looked hot enough to melt him on the spot—but his ignorance didn't stop him from trying to understand where this sudden shift of emotions was coming from.

"Uh...Lincol—"

" _What_?"

Truthfully, the clipped reply offended him, but he was still repentant enough to assume, through a blind scramble to get to the bottom of things, that he had done something wrong.

"Hey, man, I'm sorry," Clyde said. "Forget I asked. If you're really offended by the idea, I'll just—"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm fine."

Clyde raised an eyebrow in confusion, no longer as nervous and apprehensive as before. Lincoln's face was quite as scrunched up in irritation as before, but all Clyde could see it as was an attempt to fortify Lincoln's plea of satisfaction.

"What'd you mean you don't know what I'm talking about?" Clyde asked as he came to a full stop, doing so after Lincoln had the same a second ago. "I just brought up that picture thing with Lori and you got all—"

Then, in the blink of an eye, his glare and frown suddenly twisted back to their former glory. "See?!" Clyde cried. "You do  _tha_ _t!_ You get all 'scowly' and stuff!"

Clyde's impatience only grew when Lincoln decided that not only was coming clean out of the question, but that a snarky retort was all he deserved.

"I'm only 'scowly and stuff' because you don't know when to take a hint," he said, his tone bridled by stinging poison.

"About  _what_?"

"Exactly."

Clyde groaned as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Lincoln, you're not making any sense. What's your deal? I'm just trying to get to the bottom of whatever's bugging..."

He trailed off when he recalled the words he spoke before Lincoln got so heated, and the hint of a plausible answer came to him from that. It made a tiny grin come to life at the prospect of  _finally_  making some leeway. Overall,  _it_  wasn't much to lean on, but at least it was  _something._

"Oh, I think I know what's going on," Clyde said, his mood and voice colored by a burst of pride. "Something happened between you and Lori, didn't it?  _That's_  why you're upset."

When Lincoln didn't do anything except bore holes into him, Clyde's confidence began to falter, making him shrink back in shame. He supposed that he was wrong and all he managed to do was bring Lori's integrity into the fray at the expense of a hasty whim. There was no doubt that he made Lincoln feel even worse, for daring to question his bond with his sister so callously, and he couldn't blame him if he felt that he—

"And what if something  _did_  happen, huh? What's it to you?"

Clyde was too shocked to form a retort, the revelation of him being on the nose more startling than the ever-growing ire that presented itself in Lincoln's speech.

"Let me guess, you're gonna tell me that I should just get over it, right?" Lincoln asked with seething indignation. "That Lori's my sister and I should try to make things right with her?"

Though Clyde wasn't sure what Lori did to make his friend so angry—nor did he know why Lincoln never bothered to bring this up to him until he accidentally pried it out of him—it took the wind out of sails, all the same. Now, his brewing exasperation was rendered a meager little steam, and uneasiness returned to occupy his being.

"Um...yeah," Clyde said, unsure of stating anything else that could've conveyed his point more bluntly than that.

Lincoln sneered bitterly and rolled his eyes. "It figures you'd say that."

Clyde frowned. "You make it sound like that's a  _bad_  thing."

"Well, maybe that's because it  _is_ , Clyde."

"Why?"

"You wouldn't understand. You'd just admit she was wrong and then act like nothing ever happened." Lincoln looked to the side, and cast his stare at his feet with a dark glare. "Just like everyone else."

Clyde had to resist the urge to shake Lincoln about until he came to his senses. All he wanted was to spend time with his buddy on a pleasant Sunday afternoon and all he got for his troubles was a surly attitude and half-answers shrouded in vexing mystery.

Needless to say, he wasn't going to put up with it for one second longer.

"You know what? I just..." Clyde sighed as he turned his back on Lincoln. "I can't hang out with you when you're like this. Until you're ready to talk to Lori and take care of whatever happened between you two, I don't wanna be around you anymore."

The last thing he heard, as he stormed off, was Lincoln shouting at him with more rage than he had ever heard him use before:

" ** _F_ _ine! See if I care!_ "**

* * *

It wasn't often when the Loud house  _wasn't_  occupied with at least one patron running amok, their blind pursuits carried on the whim of hectic energy. This Sunday afternoon was no different. If there was an anomaly, a discrepancy that broke the humdrum frantic cycle, however, it would be that the house's most frantic commotion  _didn't_  involve any of the children for a change.

Holed up in their bedroom with open suitcases (some empty and some partially stocked) littering the floor and bed, Lynn Sr. and Rita were bound to the whims of their vacation checklist—that was long enough to stretch from one end of their room to the other—as they did their best to ensure that nothing on their list was unaccounted for. While Rita held it in her grip, rattling off different items for her husband to find and stuff in the suitcases, Lynn Sr. took any and all measures to find those items (upturning furniture and ransacking through their closet several times fit the bill for what he considered as a worthy courses of action).

About a quarter of the way through the list, Lynn Sr. called for a timeout, wanting to not only take a quick rest by sitting on his bed but for the sake of recollection—he might've been off the mark, but he could've sworn that from the assortment of items that his wife bought yesterday, in accordance with the checklist, that she had missed out on one important product.

"Honey?" Lynn Sr. asked, watching as Rita rolled up the list.

"Yes, Lynn?" she replied without looking up at him.

"Did you make sure to buy Lola her special sunscreen? The one with the SPF 200 label?"

Rita paused, blinked, and looked up at her husband. "Wait a second," she said, her face scrunched in pensive thought, "I thought  _you_  were in charge of the sunscreen."

Lynn Sr. shook his head. "No,  _I_  was in charge of finding a hotel that had a loose enough pet policy to let Lana and Lucy bring their pets with us.  _You_  were supposed to take care of the sunscreen, remember?"

Realization dawned on her with the fury of a thunderbolt, and she dropped the checklist as her hands flew over her mouth.

"Sorry. Uh, must've slipped my mind," she admitted after her arms fell limp by her sides. As if she wanted to make up for her mistake, she quickly added, her smile pleading for forgiveness, "But I  _did_  make sure to buy more diapers for Lily, a suitcase big enough for Lynn's grappling dummies, and animal crackers for Lisa."

Lynn Sr. sighed. He supposed it really wasn't a big deal, but given how much they had to pack before they left on Friday, he didn't want to spend any of the free time the weekends afforded him to make extra trips to the store to get what they needed. Still, such an oversight wasn't something he could get mad at his wife for—with thirteen people to care for, a mistake or two was bound to happen.

"Ah, it's alright," he said. "I guess I'll have to run down to the store and pick some up later. In the meantime, we can continue to rest before we pick up from where we left off. After that, we can ask them what they want to do in Grand Rapids and buy whatever else we need to make those plans happen."

He tapped his chin for a second, wondering which of his children he could go to first. Half of them were out with friends, meaning that he'd have to choose someone who was already at home. With his limited selection, his eldest daughter was the first to come to mind.

"We can start with Lori," he decided. "After that, we can ask—"

"Lynn?"

Lynn Sr. paused, waiting for Rita to follow her interruption with the rest of her thoughts on...whatever it was that crossed her mind. Whatever it was, he gave it the respect and attention he felt her current appearance deserved by not saying a word—wrinkles and a frown, bred from what looked like worry, etched on her face while her eyes featured unspoken regret.

"Actually, there's something about Lori that I want to talk to you about," she said.

It occurred to Lynn Sr. that his wife's visage was just like Leni's a few days ago, and  _her_  target of concern just so happened to be Lori, too.

"What about her?" he asked.

"Well, you know how we had her clean up the attic? As part of her punishment?" She spoke again once her husband nodded. "A little earlier, I went up there to check on her. I wanted to see if she needed anything for lunch, since she had been cleaning for about an hour since she started after twelve."

"What'd she say?"

Rita's eyes shifted away while her hands wrung together. "She said she wasn't hungry and told me not to bother getting her anything."

Warmth passed through Lynn Sr., thawing out nerves that were on edge from what he thought was going to be a serious proclamation.

"And...why is that a problem?" he asked, cracking a grin while he shrugged. "If she's not hungry, she's not hungry. It can't be helped."

Rita was too fussed to be insulted by Lynn Sr.'s indifference.

"Well, it wasn't  _what_ she said, Lynn. It's  _how_  she said it.," she continued as somberly as ever. "It reminded me of when Lori excused herself from dinner a few days ago."

Lynn Sr. didn't remember Lori looking out of sorts, though it was a little difficult for him to recall any suspicious details with his wife talking over him. It'd be best, he decided, to think about that a little later.

"She sounded..." She paused briefly to consider her words. "...sad. I can't really put my finger on it, but 'sad' is the word I'd use. At first, I thought it was just my imagination, like my mind was just playing tricks on me. But when she almost said nearly the exact same thing to me in the nearly the exact same way a little while ago, I couldn't help but make the comparison."

She looked back at her husband, who still seemed to comfortable in his own skin after everything she had just said.

"Call me crazy, but I think that Leni might've had a point. Maybe something _is_  wrong with Lori, and we're not being attentive eno—"

Her train of speech derailed when Lynn Sr., who had been sitting idly by and listening intently, decided to get off the bed, walk over to her, and hug her. She was driven by instinct to be annoyed, thinking that her husband was just condescendingly pacifying her feelings. She thought better when she thought better; it wouldn't be fair to think that he was trying to dismiss her like she was a child stirred up by nothing. After all, she was quick to believe that  _Leni_  didn't truly "get" what Lori was going through, and  _she_  most definitely wasn't trying to push her away.

"Look, Rita," Lynn Sr. said, "as much I think that you and Leni only have Lori's best interest at heart, I think we should stick to our guns and let Lori be. Remember when I went up to Lori's room to talk to her after she apologized to everyone for the babysitting incident?"

"Yes," Rita said. "I remember."

"I told her that she can always go to therapy if she feels like she needs to talk to someone about her issues. Well, it's been weeks since that happened, and she hasn't gone to me to take me up on my offer. If she really needed something to get off my chest, don't you think she would've told me by now?"

Lynn Sr. broke the hug, only to tilt her wife's head up by the chin until she was looking in his eyes directly.

"Besides," he continued on, taking pleasure in how his wisdom seemed to have an effect on her, "she hasn't gotten herself into any trouble as far as I can tell. And when Leni talked to us about her the other day, she didn't mention anything that was worth getting bent out of shape over. I mean, yeah, it stink that she's apparently not spending as much time with Leni as much as she usually does, but part of growing up and handling your responsibilities means that you don't always get what you want.

We should be proud that Lori's thinking like an adult, not fussing over nothing. I'll admit that maybe she's a little down in the dumps about being grounded for as long as she is, but that's nothing to get worried about."

By now, what was once smothering anxiety quelled to a feeble flicker of a flame that a peck on the forehead from her husband put out.

"I guess you're right, dear," she said, chuckling at what she believed to be foolishness. "Maybe I'm just being a little silly and not really thinking things through."

Lynn Sr. laughed. "Hey now, what's wrong with being a little silly?" he asked. "You had no problem getting married to me, remember?"

Rita smirked. "Weeeeell, I wouldn't say that I didn't have a  _few_  problems with it," she said.

Her smirk turned into a giddy grin when Lynn Sr. caught her off guard with tickling hands that found her sides. When she tried to playfully bat him away, he moved to her neck instead. Her mirthful peals of laughter only encouraged him to keep it up, his ticklish assault roaming everywhere he pleased.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding! Mercy!" Rita cried, her begging and squirming finally getting Lynn Sr. to stop, but not before he gave her a light poke in her belly.

"Hmph," Lynn Sr. huffed with folded arms and a self-satisfied smile. "That's what I thought."

While Rita took a moment to catch her breath, Lynn Sr. got back to thinking about Lori. He trusted his intuition, but that didn't mean that he couldn't reward his daughter for all her hard work. As far as he could remember, she had taken her punishment on the chin without so much as a complaint. If she  _was_  feeling down, then compensating her labor seemed like the right thing to do.

"Anyway," he said, "now that you mentioned Lori, I think I've got something in mind that'll lend us a helping hand  _and_  give her a little treat all at once."

With that, he donned another mischievous grin and latched his fingers into Rita's sides again.

"Now then," he said as his wife stared at him with a look of giddy terror, knowing full well where he was going with this, "I'm not finished being silly yet."

* * *

As he flounced towards his house, Lincoln's vision was bathed in red, and his stomps carried venom that he had yet to unleash, even after giving his best friend scathing parting words. He just needed to get away, to make as much distance from stupid Clyde and his stupid suppositions as he possibly could.

What did  _he_  know, anyway? What gave him the right to go around and think so highly of himself that he felt that he was a good enough judge of character to know what Lori should be worth to him? How could he, someone who wasn't even in the know about the consequences of Lori's selfish recklessness, go to bat for her without even so much as believing that he had a bone to pick for a good reason?

Fine. Whatever. Clyde could have his dumb crush, and the fantasized, glorified impression of Lori that came along with it. Meanwhile, he would deal with reality. He would see Lori for what she  _truly_  was and know that not only was she not worth speaking to but that he didn't need her cycle of self-indulgence ruining not only  _his_  life but other people's lives, too.

He made it to the front door's pathway a few minutes later, too indulged with his anger to pay Lola and Lana—who were driving around in Lola's toy car in the front yard—any mind, even after they waved and called out to him.. Before he could make it to the door, he chucked his Frisbee away with a hardy toss, too incensed to care where it landed.

His path met a barrier of resistance in the shape of the front door, its locked state becoming apparent to him after he gave the doorknob a few turns. He hissed an angry breath through clenched teeth and banged the door a few times with a heavy fist, the seconds after his last knock a bitter annoyance as he impatiently waited for it to open.

He only had to wait a few more seconds later for the door to finally open, revealing a smiling Leni. Lincoln didn't notice, as he roughly slipped past to march towards the stairs, how her bright beaming faltered once she got a good look at him and the churlish way he brushed her aside. Her bewilderment became apparent to him only after Leni had halted him by grabbing him by the arm. While she held him in place, she took the opportunity to close and lock the door with her other hand before addressing him.

"Lincoln, hold on," she said with a voice far more gentle than her grasp was. "Are you okay?"

Hearing Leni reach out to him in concern quashed his anger by a significant fraction, but not enough to turn around and look at her nor reply in a tone that wasn't soaked in annoyance.

"I'm not," he said as he tried to shimmy out of Leni's hold on him, "but I'd rather not talk about it. I just wanna read my comic books in peace."

His noncommittal answer, unfortunately, had no effect on quelling Leni's curiosity.

"Why not talk about it?" she asked.

"I just don't wanna. Now, let got of me, please."

"But, Lincoln, I—"

"Leni, I just wanna go to my room for a bit and cool off. I don't want to be bothered right now. Let. Me. Go."

He immediately found success once Leni got the hint and dropped his arm, as if it were a scalding hot potato. And just like, Lincoln cringed at how his forceful, abrasive words must've shredded Leni's goodwill to shreds. The way she replied with a muttered, "O-okay," only drove that point further, along with blooming guilt that sprouted from his gut and threatened to swallow him whole.

He let out a weary sigh and resigned himself to what was fair but uncomfortable—though he really wasn't in the mood to spill his guts, Leni didn't deserved to get snapped at like that, much less left in the dark to do nothing but worry while he moped and brooded in his room all day.

Knowing what he had to do, he turned around, looked at Leni, and said, "Look, I'll tell you about it. Just...just promise me you'll try to understand me, okay?"

Though he should've known better than to not trust Leni, one of most caring and empathetic people he knew, he couldn't allow himself to be relieved when she promised him, with as much earnestness as he had ever seen from her, that she would hear him out with everything that she had.

The chances were, Lincoln considered with gloom as Leni led him up the stairs by the hand, that Leni would just blindly stand up for Lori and abandon him if he had the "audacity" to stand his ground.

Just like Clyde had done.


	5. Chapter 5

With her homework already accounted for the night before, Leni was bound to mindless distractions upon waking up on Sunday at nine in the morning—she'd get a seat on the couch to catch up with her favorite shows (if she was lucky enough to not have any of her siblings beat her to the punch), but she'd have to shower, brush her teeth and hair, and get dressed first.

With the weekend affording each Loud sibling the luxury of waking up whenever they wanted, Leni was able to shower without waiting in line. Normally, she'd have to head to her room to slip into a fresh pair of clothes afterward attending to her personal hygiene, but she took it upon herself to take her clean clothes into the bathroom with her. As she took measures to give her hair brushing a thorough inspection in the bathroom mirror, a sad frown emerged as she thought of the reason  _why_  she had taken that course of action—like most of her anxious thoughts centered around these days, they had her sleeping roommate in mind.

Her silly head, filled with foolish whims, had to make her worry about Lori's well-being more than ever, even after Mom and Dad assured her that fretting wasn't necessary. As if thinking that Lori was undergoing some kind of...whatever it was she thought of her recent behavior (she couldn't quite put her finger on "it"),  _now_  she had to worry about Lori's supposed  _lack of_   _sleep_ —if she  _was_  having trouble getting enough rest, then dressing up in the bathroom (instead of re-entering her room, thus creating an unnecessary commotion with her moving about) was the only thing that she could do.

Her impression of an insomnia dilemma started yesterday morning, just as the crack of dawn's early morning sunlight spilled through her bedroom window and pierced through her closed eyes—not even her sleeping mask could keep her pupils from being bathed in a bright orange bath of blinding light. Leni had stirred awake with a grunt of annoyance and she absentmindedly flopped to her side as she shuffled her mask off. She had the presence of mind to be aware of her surroundings, namely the window that had been giving her problems.

Her clarity, however, allowed her to see the upright Lori-sized lump that sat underneath the blanket, a faint spotlight of blue light shining through the fabric. It was that sight that had made Leni believe that she was dreaming—she knew what that light meant (having seen it plenty of times before) and there was no way that Lori was up at 6:38 in the morning on her phone. Yes, she and that phone were attached to the hip, as her father had jokingly said the week after he had gotten it for her (though, weren't phones attached to the  _hand_ , if anything?), but the latest she'd use it would be, give or take,  _midnight_.

Had Lori been using it since she had last seen her with it before she drifted off to bed that Friday night? The thought of such a drastic shift in phone usage was enough to get her to ask Lori if she had had a good night's sleep once they were both at the dining table with their breakfast. Her fears were met with denial as Lori—between sluggish, hearty sips of coffee—told her that she had slept well.

That, Leni thought, should've been the end of it, the end of her thoughtless apprehension. The fact that her foreboding carried with her into the present shamed her. Couldn't she trust her own sister and parents enough to believe them? What had they done to deserve her reluctance to trust them?

Whatever it was that wasn't allowing Leni relax, once she stepped out of the bathroom—as freshened up as her newfound attitude—she was determined not to give it any mind as she drowned out her troubles with as much TV time as possible. And after helping herself to a bowl of sugary cereal flakes, that was exactly how she spent the remainder of her morning and early afternoon. Luckily, only a few of her sisters were interspersed within her lounging session as they took over the TV to watch what  _they_  wanted.

But her course for relaxation, which was admittedly having a positive effect on her troubled soul, took an unexpected turn when she heard loud banging against the front door.

* * *

She didn't say it out loud, but Leni felt relieved—honest-to-God  _liberated_  from the crushing weight of anxious dread—that Lincoln hadn't insisted on driving a wedge between them by closing himself off from her. She didn't know what she'd do if Lincoln, who was clearly out of sorts, continued to dig his heels in the ground and declare that he "didn't want to talk"…

...much to the same effect as Lori's "I'm fine" replies; both retorts refused to let her in.

Except with Lincoln, it was  _worse_. She could concede that Lori's behavior was, at the very worst, very dubious—the onus was on  _her_  to respect that Lori could handle herself, especially after her parents endorsed her actions. Lincoln, however, left no room for any doubt; he was  _clearly_  hurting and as selfish as it sounded in her head, she jumped at the opportunity of acting as a reliable sister to not only put Lincoln at ease but to gratify her need to be dependable after Lori, Mom, and Dad had unintentionally taken that away from her with their gung-ho "everything's fine" insistence.

Her underlying elation, however, took a massive dive after she led Lincoln up to his room and he took a seat on his bed while she sat in his chair by his desk—guilt panged through her chest like a fiery arrow as she listened to her brother get to the meat of his story, specifically the  _reason_  why he had an argument with Clyde in the first place.

Her eyes misted with unshed tears, which she brushed away while her brother wasn't looking. How could she've been so stupid? She'd been doing nothing but giving Lori undivided attention that she probably didn't need. Meanwhile, she let Lincoln's bitterness of Lori carry on through the weeks, to the point where his friendships were in jeopardy because of it. It was no secret that Lincoln wasn't on the best of terms with Lori, but Leni had clearly done the wrong thing by assuming that he wasn't  _this_  angry with her.

Still, if there was any sort of silver lining to this, it was with Lincoln's expression as he drew his story to a close. Flickers of resentment had danced behind his eyes and his lips were curled in a tightened frown while he was recalling his falling out with Clyde at the beginning. By now, however, sadness drowned his face, as if to suggest that he had regret over what he had done. Perhaps, Leni thought, that meant that Lincoln's heart was open to letting Lori in, too.

"And that's when he told me that he didn't want to hang around me until I got over what Lori did," Lincoln said, his knees drawn to his chest and his eyes glued to his feet. "Then, he left for home."

A watery, shaky sigh tore out of his throat. "I told him to just drop it, but he just..." He paused to swallow the lump in his throat. "No, I...I-I shouldn't have snapped at him like that. I mean, it's not his fault that I didn't tell him about what Lori did. And in the end, he was just trying to help me. But it's just..."

He trailed off again, and Leni's heart skipped a beat when the faintest trace of a snarl took form across his lips.

"Just what?" Leni asked, hoping he'd clarify with something that could put her at ease.

Apparently, Lincoln felt like he was being needled to open up to soon for his liking—that's all Leni could think as he shrunk back a little and looked away from her with a sulky pout.

"I don't like bringing Lori up," he said. "It's been so easy to just ignore her, y'know? I've barely spoken a word to her since that night, and I try not to think about her for as long as I can. Because every time I do, I just wind up hating her all over again. I mean, I'm still  _mad_  at Lori, but I don't wanna  _hate_  her."

Leni could only guess what he thought of in the moment his pout hardened before he said, "Though, I can't forgive her, either. All I can do is just ignore her. At least if I keep her out of my mind, I can't hate her."

Another fiery arrow hit its mark, scorching her spirits with a deadly blow—things were way worse than they thought. Leni could admit that she had held her fair share of grudges against her siblings before, but she couldn't remember anything close to  _hatred_ lasting for but a brief second or two at the  _longest_.

With the hope of hearing a more comforting report on his honest feelings, despite everything suggesting that she was better off not even bothering, she asked, "Do you, uh, hate her now?"

Lincoln turned to her, and Leni noted that the hardened fire behind his gaze faltered. "What'd you mean?" he asked.

"You're thinking about her right now, aren't you? So, like, do you hate her?"

Contemplation weighed heavy on Lincoln's mind, Leni could see, as it took him a few seconds to come clean—the fact that his next words weren't said with a scathing tone behind them didn't make Leni feel much better.

"A little, yeah," he said before he shut his eyes and breathed heavily through his nose. "I know I shouldn't, but I just can't let what she did go. Besides, this isn't the first time she's put herself before others—it's hard to believe that she's sorry when she never learns."

Without missing a beat, Leni pushed on, not wanting to dwell on her feelings when Lincoln's were the ones that needed to be treated. Still, the realization that Lincoln held a fraction of hatred for Lori, no matter how meager he made it out to be, broke her heart.

"Lincoln?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"Why can't you forgive Lori?"

"I just..." His gaze left her once again, his eyes titled towards the ceiling. "...I just can't."

Leni's brow creased downward at a slight angle, the gesture driven by impulse. In that moment, she didn't allow herself to feel guilt from the glint of impatience and frustration she harbored at how unfair she felt those last few words were.

"Lincoln, she's your sister," Leni said sternly. "She deserves better than that."

Lincoln let out a groan. "I knew it," he said. "I just  _knew_  you wouldn't get it."

The only reason why Leni didn't sharply retort back at him, for implying that she wasn't fit to know Lori enough to know that she was worth Lincoln's forgiveness, was because he  _didn't_  carry his words with a biting, accusatory tone. Instead, his eyes drew to her again, casting gentleness that, up until this point, seemed impossible for Lincoln to harbor.

"But it's not your fault. You weren't there that night. Of course, you wouldn't understand. You think this is all about what she did to  _me_ , isn't it?" He shook his head and spoke before Leni could reply. "Yeah, it really hurt when she shoved me down and hurt me, but I got over that. What I  _can't_  get over is what she did to you guys and  _especially_  what she did to Carol."

The softness in his voice chipped away towards the end of his sentence, and Leni felt her stomach roll in nervous knots as she watched her brother ball up his hands into fists.

"She was just trying to know what it was like to have younger siblings to take care of and bond with. That's why she became a babysitter in the first place. And I was gonna help her. I promised her that..." Leni gasped when she saw tiny trickles of tears bleeding out of his eyes. "I-I promised her that I could be her little brother any time she wanted. I promised her that I could show her what she was missing out on."

Leni got up and sat on the bed along side her brother. Even as his body shook, from the anger that he was clearly trying not to let loose, she braved the warning signs and let her hand slide over one of his fists—the warmth of their contact froze her blood when she noted how it hardly had any comforting effect on him. Still, she was hung on every word, taken aback at the little tidbit of Carol's and the fondness that her brother clearly had for her.

"A-and then Lori came in and ruined it," Lincoln continued, his voice uneven and tacky. "She chewed her out and wanted to beat her up just because she couldn't stand that someone was doing her job better than her. All Carol wanted was to be happier than she'd ever been before. Now, she doesn't want anything to do with me anymore, and it's all Lori's fault."

When Lincoln ripped his hand away from Leni, her heart clutched in pain. Before she could apologize for imposing herself too forwardly, however, Lincoln's next actions suggested that she  _hadn't_  offended him—she watched as he rolled out of bed to stroll over his drawer and pull out a sheet of paper.

"She left  _this_  for me after I fell asleep that night," he said and passed it off to Leni before he crawled back into his bed. "I found it on my desk after I woke up."

Leni held up the paper, her eyes quickly glancing over the words that were on them. Though she was beckoned to indulge her curiosity by reading it, she gave one last look at her brother to ensure that he was, at the very least, okay. She found him scowling softly with a sideways glance, but it was at least better than shaking with repressed resentment.

With that, she glanced over at the paper again and read it out loud.

" _Hey Lincoln,_

_I hope you had a good night's sleep, given everything that happened. I was thinking about telling you this in person, before I tucked you in, but I had second thoughts. Chances are, you'd fight tooth and nail with me not to say what I'm about to tell you, and I didn't want to risk being talked out of it._

_I really appreciate you, Lincoln. I know I'm supposed to be more impartial to all the kids I babysit, but I honestly say that you're the best I've had_ _to watch over. And I was looking forward to getting to know even more about you, as your honorary big sister and all..."_

Leni peered over the paper to judge Lincoln's expression, and she was nearly tempted to stop altogether when she found that his glare, which had been tiny and subdued, was twice the length it was before. That, along with how Carol's words seemed to be setting up for tragedy, made a sickly tingle trace up her spine.

Regardless, she soldiered on for the sake of closure.

" _But I realize that I just can't do that. You're a great kid, Lincoln, but I have to stay away from you, all the same. I thought I knew enough about Lori to know that she'd never lash out at me like she did, but I was wrong. And to be honest, that makes me afraid of any possibilities that could come from me hanging around you. I'm fine with her taking out her aggression on me, but she crossed the line when she hurt you._

_But what made it worse was that she didn't have to hurt you. I could've stopped her, but I was too late to do anything. I failed to protect you, and words can't begin to describe how sorry I am that I let you down as not only your babysitter but as someone who you wanted to invite into your life._

_I'm honored that you'd even consider me as part of your family, given how wonderful your sisters are, but I have to turn down that privilege. Even if I felt that I deserved it, I still don't want to see you get hurt like that again._

_So, I'm saying this as a final goodbye. Please don't try to change my mind. This is for both of our sakes. Thank you for everything, Lincoln. If I had a little brother or sister, I'd want them to be just like you._

_Take care,_

_Carol"_

Once she was finished, she set the letter down on Lincoln's desk before sitting back down. Even now, her mind was abuzz with contemplation—the gravity of her brother's animosity had been fully realized before she reached the last word, but Lincoln was quick to add his his thoughts, as if she needed help wondering why he felt this way about Lori.

"You know, after the last time Clyde had a sleepover here, he made me realize how lucky I've been to have ten..." He frowned as his words petered off. "...well,  _nine_  great sisters. Sometimes, I take you guys for granted, but I've had such a great life because all of you are in it to make it better.

But Carol? She had the chance of having her own sibling snatched away from her, and she did nothing to deserve it. How am I supposed to forgive Lori when all I wanted to do was give her a taste of what she  _could've_  had all along?  _How_ , Leni? You tell me."

Frankly, as much as it shamed her to admit, Leni didn't have a "respectable" answer. There wasn't a magic pair of words, woven in intricate wisdom, that she could use to nudge Lincoln towards the path of forgiveness. All she had, though she wasn't sure if it meant much, was mutual understanding. Maybe it wouldn't be enough, but both Lori and Lincoln deserved her best foot forward, all the same.

"I...think I understand you, Lincoln," Leni said. "Sometimes, Lori can say and do really hurtful things. I should know; she sabotaged my driver's test, after al—"

"See?!" Lincoln cried, his outburst startling Leni and knocking her off her stride. " _That's_  what I'm talking about! She keeps putting herself before everyone else and ruins everything! No matter how many times she apologizes and promises to change, she  _never_  does! She keeps hurting people over and over again!"

Aghast at his unabashed reflection of Lori's character, Leni was driven to snatch that away from him as quickly as possibly by getting back on track.

"I wasn't finished yet," she said calmly and waited for her brother's seething rage to be soothed to the point where he could listen to her, unabated by emotions.

"Yes, Lori's not perfect, but everyone makes mistakes." Leni gave Lincoln a pointed look. "Even you. Remember all the stuff that you did in the past that hurt us? We forgave  _you_ , didn't we?"

To Leni's disappointment, Lincoln shrugged off her council without so much as taking a moment to pause and meditate on it.

"Look, I'm not saying I'm perfect, and I don't expect Lori to be perfect, either," he said. "But I've never done anything like  _she_  did. And if she'd just learn not to be so petty all the time, then that would've never happened. You and everyone else can act like that shouldn't matter all you want, but it matters to me."

It was then that Leni's focus aligned, shifting to the bigger picture that had been waiting for someone to put together, From the beginning, she had only been looking to fix a Lori issue. Presently, she was dwelling on solving a Lincoln issue. But now, it was crystal clear that the mountain that she had to scale was a Lori  _and_  Lincoln issue.

It was obvious that Lincoln, despite his hatred, wanted to see Lori as a better sister and desperately needed reassurance that she was worth letting back into his life. Lori, on the other hand, was better off with Lincoln than without him—even if Leni could believe that Lori wasn't a victim of some downward spiral, it wasn't wrong to assume that she missed her little brother's love.

That meant, for the sake of both her downtrodden siblings, that they need to reconcile with each other with earnestness and understanding. And if Lincoln could expose so much to her, then he could surely do the same with Lori.

"And  _you_  matter to Lori, Lincoln. You really do," Leni replied with a smile, confidence filling her to the brim. "I know she's really sorry about what she did, and you'll both feel better if you just talk to one another. I know it. I just kn..."

She hesitated from saying anything further when Lincoln stared at her in bewilderment.

"What're you talking about?" he asked. "Lori's fine, isn't she?"

With that, Leni's conviction began to wilt. Lincoln had unintentionally put her faith in Lori in check. Though it was stronger than before, the foundation was just about as sturdy as an old, rickety bridge—something that was only manageable to cross with light, measured steps, but overall unreliable.

"I...I guess," Leni said, her grin waned but not dead. "She says that she is, but I think she still feels really bad about what happened, and...maybe it's because you keep ignoring her. Maybe if you were to, like, at least hear her out, you both could—"

"I already feel fine. If Lori can't feel comfortable in her own skin, then that's  _her_  problem."

Leni's eyes burst open, her eager optimism tumbling off the tracks with a thunderous, booming crash. What's more, the indescribable feeling—that was beginning to fester and overtake her like a rampant, blooming weed—made her skin itch and her face redden. Regardless, Lincoln didn't seem to care about his sister's response enough to keep him from speaking his harsh words.

"If anything, she  _should_  feel bad. But that's not going to fix the damage she caused. That's not going to take away all the pain that she lashed out on someone I care about."

If there was any mystery about the sensation that felt like hot steam building up in her body, it wasn't anymore. Leni's benevolence, her patience, her willingness to see her brother venture down a more sensible path, was consumed in righteous anger.

She stood up suddenly, her abrupt descent immediately causing Lincoln to take notice and shrink back in timidity. "L-Leni?"

"I just..." Leni's temper flared up again as she grit her teeth, her voice still yet heated enough to convey her indignation. "I can't believe you. The Lincoln I know wouldn't talk like that. He'd never act like his sisters' pain didn't matter.  _Never_."

Her heart was hardly moved when Lincoln looked at her with pleading eyes, the same look he gave her earlier when he begged her to understand her. She had done more than enough understanding, and what she had discovered wasn't worth her pity nor her further indulgence.

"Leni, I—"

"And you can say and think what you want about Lori, but she'd  _never_  treat you like this."

That  _had_  to have stung; Leni thought as much as she watched Lincoln's resolve buckle through his weak, wounded grimace.

But not even that could stop her from leaving parting words that, though cast from a place of disappointment, were done so with the hopes that perspective could sink in.

"Until you're ready to be the Lincoln Loud that I know, I don't think you're worth Lori's time, anyway. Have fun with your comics."

With that, Leni stormed out of Lincoln's bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her. Even amid her frustration, hope for reconciliation never left.

* * *

At 11:29 AM, just a few minutes before the start of Sunday afternoon, a bleary, bloodshot eye peeled open. The other one followed suit soon after. All the same, Lori's dawning consciousness did little to wipe away the foggy smears and thick cobwebs that sapped her brain and body of energy—it did  _even less_  for the pulses of misery that shocked her back after an innocuous little twist.

She hissed through her teeth from the pain, but the sudden intake of air throttled her gut and made her nauseous. Lori surmised that, perhaps today  _wasn't_  a day for a big breakfast. If anything, it was a day to appreciate how she had managed to finally get some sleep, even if a measly five hours wasn't anything to write home about.

Friday evening had left her...dead, alive in body but numb in the senses that made her human. Otherwise, she wouldn't have spent all of that Friday night and Saturday morning dead awake. She had alternated between gazing at the dull light of her phone and the heavenly bodies in the sky, whether they were the dazzling stars of midnight or the warm color-shrouded clouds within the sunrise.

It wasn't for longing or regret for what she had done to Bobby; if anything, she gained a modicum of peace for giving instead of taking for herself.

But that momentary burst of achievement shattered under the blunt realization that her shortcomings, her monstrous feats of folly and malice, couldn't be done away with only one little act of charity. If anything, that selfish line of thinking was how she was able to live apart from her better senses for so long without any regard for anyone else. It was exactly how drunkards and cheaters, liars and murderers, could look themselves in the mirror for so long; act in goodwill in a meager exhibition to fight back at their consciences enough to plunder and kill for their own benefit.

 _She_  was no better than those types of scum, she thought as the first tendrils of guilt took root that night—the fact that the thought of "atoning for herself" crossed her mind around the same time that Bobby's well-being did proved that.

That self-condemnation had carried with her throughout Saturday, leaving her mindlessly drifting throughout the house without the focus to tend to matters with a clear head—her sleep-deprived faculties made the day-long journey arduous. The only instance she recalled with some clarity was a dodged bullet—she nearly sweat bullets from the brief flash of incredulity on Leni's face after she had told her that she had slept well.

Exhaustion had finally done the trick in knocking Lori out before the sunrise of early Sunday morning. Her call to action, to do something to validate her continued existence in her family, wasn't fully realize until after she had dragged her creaky brittle body out of bed and accidentally bumped into her mother on her way down the stairs.

She had stopped her and filled her in on what she and Dad needed her to do today, as her punishment had called for. Over the past few weeks, Lori's weekends had been filled with submitting to drudgery of household duties—scrubbing the bathroom floor, sweeping up the basement, and washing Vanzilla were her responsibilities last week.

Today's was cleaning up the attic, specifically organizing boxes in rows via alphabetical order.

Lori felt her weary bones ache from the sound of all that physical labor alone, but she agreed without complaint. Her voice of reason had put it best as she watched her mother go on her way:

' _If you can't even clean up an attic, then what good are you?'_

And so, after having her fill with a glass of water and half a banana, Lori tiredly trudged towards her post, intent on seeing her task through for the sake of her parents. They had every right to cast her out, to decry her as a disgrace and forsake her of her family name for being the destructive fiend that she was. But she was given the chance to exist with a purpose, and it was to serve better as a maid than she ever could as a daughter.

And what a better place to do it than the attic, the place where the unwanted trinkets of old were stowed away and left to rot, forgotten and alone—for as long as it took to get the job done, Lori would be surrounded by useless ilk that failed to bring happiness for long.

A cold shiver raced down Lori's spine, mingling with the burning aching in her back at a sordid thought:

How long would it took, though, before her parents found an attic for  _her_?

* * *

In one moment, a tape-sealed box of old picture frames was securely in Lori's arms, regardless of how her body had swayed from exhaustion as she went to drop it off where it needed to be.

In the very next moment, a streak of fatigue zapped through, wiping her out and sending her and the box tumbling towards the ground. She barely reacted in time to prevent considerable damage. On her way down, she shifted her arm downwards to grab the box by the tape that was peeling off the side.

Though she succeeded in making sure that the box hadn't crashed onto the floor, the extra weight on her sluggish body only made her descent worse—she slammed against the floor, her box-bearing arm taking the brunt of the force as it jammed into the creaky wood. The dust from the floor flew up and made Lori cough from its accidental inhalation into her lungs. She continued to splutter and cough, all while feelings pure agony rack down her left arm.

A greater sensation—dread—ignited her heart into a beating frenzy when she heard the attic's stepladder creak. With nervous, frantic energy pushing her forward, she scrambled onto the floor into a seated position, legs crossed and arms splayed in her lap nonchalantly—a mollifying grin completed the façade just in time for her father's head to peek through the opening.

She fought the urge to sigh in relief when he seemed to not notice anything amiss—the pain and discomfort from her task was hers to endure alone. She'd be a cretin to take advantage of her father's kindness by stitching the misery of a victim on her sleeve for him to pity.

"Ah,  _there_  you are, Lori," Dad said. "You're  _still_  cleaning out the attic, huh? I thought you'd be done by now."

"S-sorry," Lori replied. "I'll get back to work. I was just taking a little break."

Dad shook his head. "Ah, forget about the attic," he said. "I actually have something  _else_  in mind for you to do for me."

' _You better not mess this up.'_

"What's that?" Lori asked.

"Could you run down to the store and buy some groceries, please? I left the money and the grocery list on the kitchen table. And while you're at the store, make sure that you pick up some sunscreen for Lola, okay? It's got an SPF rating of 200 and that picture of the Beagle puppy with sunglasses and a sunhat on."

Lori obeyed without a second thought. "Okay," she said. "I will."

She made a move to get up, but Dad unintentionally stopped her when he said, with a proud grin. "Oh, and one more thing. There's twenty dollars there for you to spend on whatever you want. Consider it my thanks for doing such a good job around the house lately. Keep it up."

Her phony smile conveyed elation, but hearing her father's words of praise didn't make it move—not even so much as a twitch—in a genuine response to happiness.

Besides the pain, emptiness was all she could feel, even as she nodded and said, "I will."

"Thanks, Lori. Love you" Dad said before he waved goodbye and left.

She didn't have the will to go after him and reciprocate his feelings. She was far too busy wondering how she had his love after everything that she had done. Perhaps, she decided, it was a phrase of obligation. That was the only way such a declaration of kindness could make sense in the fog of her weary head.

With much grunting and straining, Lori lifted herself off the floor and staggered towards the stepladder. Whether she had her father's love or not, she did  _not_  have his permission to fail him.

* * *

Even after minutes of successfully cruising into the heart of Royal Woods, the agonizing sensations didn't ebb. She was  _still_  throttled with vision and hearing that was marred under a blurry filter—noises of passerby vehicles and the sight of streetlights melded into a cacophony that Lori could hardly put together without pleading with herself to stay alert and  _focus._

It was a price worth paying, having decided that after a swift kick in the butt. Before that, though, she had made herself sick with how she had tried to make excuses for herself before she even left the driveway. Oh, her arm had a little boo-boo? She was a little tired? That meant she couldn't complete one paltry task that she was asked to do?

' _Pathetic. Mom and Dad have gone through way worse trying to raise a family, and you can't make one small trip to the grocery store? Useless and ungrateful; how lower do you need to sink until you're happy?'_

And that swift kick thrust her into action, propelling her forward as she managed, with only a few mental hiccups, to keep her eyes on the prize.

Ah, and there was the intersection of Spring Lane and Saffron Street now. Just a few more intersections and a left turn would lead her right where she needed to be. In a stroke of fortune, she was dealing with a clear lane, no cars in front of her—she had a few close calls of nearly tapping into the bumper of a few cars earlier from her groggy senses misjudging the oncoming distance. Now, there'd be no such problems.

With the gentle steady press of the brake pedal, Lori approached the sold white line…

...at a faster speed than what she was previously traveling.

She was choked in her fog, not registering her mistake until it was too late and she was within the intersection—she didn't get a chance to slip her foot off the  _gas_  pedal before her world was rocked by the sharp blaring of a car horn, the loud squealing of car wheels, and the thunderous smashing of another vehicle colliding into Vanzilla's side.

Her head jerked forward violently, cracking against the ridge of the steering wheel.

* * *

Though her eyes were closed, she was still coming to.

She could barely hear herself think over the loud sirens and shouting voices that crowded around her—had it not been for the overbearing, paralyzing pain that kept her body from jostling about, she would've squirmed against the cold surface of the blacktop of the street seeping through her clothes.

Her head drummed in agony as the feeling of oozing warmth sticking locks of her hair against her face. It dribbled down her face, running over her lips and seeping through the thin crack. She gagged and coughed from the entry of blood, something she instantly regretted when her ribs and sternum ached with each spastic push.

But the worst of it all, radiated from her left arm. It was exploding in pain, bursting under tortuous ministration. She braved her head over to the side, her slow movement sending ripples of torment down her neck. An eye cracked open to survey the damage and Lori's heart nearly burst—blood caked over a gaping wound in her forearm, a red-soaked bone jutting through muscle and skin.

Lori's mouth flew open, a gurgling scream crying out that ended nearly as quickly as it began—it ended with a cough, blood spewing out in a short gush that sprinkled across her face.

And then, shortly after another scything slice of pain cut through her heart, her world faded into darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

This...this was a surprise—it felt like an eternity since there was motion that dragged her around, but it seemed like it was over.

But that smell...the smell  _still_  lingered around her. It was if she was dipped in disinfecting chemicals and left out to dry, leaving her forced to inhale that musty odor as it clung to her skin.

And was that... _beeping_?

It was almost hard to tell for certain, but it wasn't impossible to recall such a sound before. It had come in small bursts, flashes of awareness that broke through the veil of murky unconsciousness. Through those flashes came other sounds; squeaky wheels spinning, overlapping frantic voices jumbled together, sirens wailing…

_Ugh._

Even though an indescribable amount of time had passed between now and that last flash, the heaviness swimming in her head was nearly as crushing as ever. It didn't...hurt, per se, but it was almost as if a building had fallen on her head and kept it pinned down beneath the rubble.

Her left side suffered the same heavy fate, namely around where her arm should be. Unlike her head, though, there  _was_  pain. She could remember there being pain before, but instead of tearing through her like she were wet tissue paper and igniting her nerves with blazing fire, now there was merely a dull ache that throbbed in unison with her beating heart.

Still, there was a warmth over her right hand. She couldn't describe it as anything other than a little pleasant, even  _familiar_.

The most she could venture to do, despite the effort remaining a taxing strain, was slowly lifting up her eyelids. The peeks of light that sliced through her half-open slits stung, but she fought against it. Despite a few seconds passing, her world was  _still_  a smeary blur.

Along with her eyes, her ears began to come alive and take everything in. Yes...yes, there was that odd beeping again; it rung from the leftward corner, away from her line of sight. Next came the smattering of conversation, only it was muffled and distant instead of looming over her head like it had been before.

When her eyes finally adjusted to the light, the pieces began falling into place. It was much easier to take everything in, considering that her bed as affixed in the Fowler's position; pink curtains that enveloped her bed area and a ceiling with stripped lighting fixtures surrounded. A look to her left revealed why her arm felt heavy. It was molded in a thick white cast that was kept in place with a blue slung, leaving her forefinger free to be clamped in what looked like a...pulse oximeter.

There was also something sticking in the pit of her right arm, the fixture stamped down by a sticky, tacky substance. Her guess, given where she thought she was, was that it was an IV drip.

By now, the beeping was no longer a mystery, though she wondered if the noisy heart monitor was responsible for stirring her awake. Or maybe it was the slightly itchy, light blue garbs she was adorned in and woolly blue blanket that was draped over her.. Better still, it could've been the fact that the warm sensation on her right hand suddenly squeezed softly around her. It had startled her a bit, but when her eyes drifted to her right…

Her heart paced up a bit, the sudden spike registering immediately on the heart monitor. Sitting by her bedside was someone... whom she wasn't expecting. When their eyes met, hers stayed wide and surprised while his misted up immediately from tears. That hand left hers when he suddenly got up and, as quickly but gingerly as she could, reached out and hugged her.

Amid his loud sobbing, her soft voice spoke the loudest. "Dad?"

For reasons she couldn't quite understand, that only made him cry harder. When a cold, stray tear rolled down his neck and singed the crook of her neck, she shivered. And through that icy contact came a jolt to her brain that racked her head with dizzying, horrifying memories—surges of the recent past that led her to where she was now.

_The violent crashing._

_Her body flailing forward._

_Her head smashing against the steering wheel._

_The windshield's glass sprinkling out in an explosive burst and carving her exposed skin before she passed out._

_The cold ground chilling her back._

_Her breaths torturing her ribs._

_Her bone jabbing through her skin._

_Her panicked screams choked back by her blood._

At the last one, a painful lump grew in her throat as she held back her tears. By the looks of things, her father had suffered enough; Lori wouldn't make it worse on him by looking even more vulnerable.

Not after everything that she had done to him.

* * *

Holding it together proved more difficult than she thought—especially with how Dad's tender whispers of affection nearly splintered her heart down the center—but she managed to make it through by the time he had finished weeping. The pressure of crippling dread pressed even further into chest with the knowledge that now that it was all over, now that her father was done coddling her like the helpless child that she was (at least for now), he'd want answers.

He'd want to know why she ended up this way, and he wouldn't be satisfied with any spared details. That, of course, would only result in him taking back all of those tears of remorse once he realized that she failed him because she couldn't go ten seconds with being such a screw-up. Hell, forget just her father—she failed  _everyone._ She couldn't even manage a trip to the grocery store without messing up, and it was all because she couldn't bother to put her family first and ignore her pain to make it happen.

A fresh pang of cutting revulsion jammed into her throat, nearly sucking in all the air in the room with her silent gasp. It was already apparent to her that she probably totaled the family van, but her selfishness had brought out another steep price that she was too stupid to consider until now—what about the  _other_  person? What if they had gotten as hurt as her or…or  _worse_? She couldn't imagine that she'd be able to look in the mirror ever again, let alone live comfortably with the blood of an innocent person (with the possibilities of other unaccounted causalities) forever etched in her skin and in her memories. How on Earth could she ever—

' _You, you, you—always about you. You've probably hurt a family outside of your own, possibly with several deaths, and all you can think about is how it'll affect you.'_

The thought made her outwardly flinch and bare her teeth in self-disgust, something that Dad must've taken notice of.

"Lori?"

She hesitated to meet his eyes at first, but she relented when she realized that she really didn't have any other plausible choice in the matter. She felt her stomach squirm with anxious tension when he followed up his question by asking, "Uh...you feelin' alright?"

Her first instinct was to go back to her old bag of tricks with her fake smile and insistence that she was fine. But as much success as she had had with it before, she knew she couldn't fall back on such a tactic without immediately being called out on it. How could she get away with such a statement when she probably looked like the perfect portrait of pitiable helplessness?

Lori managed to shift her head left and right with a shake, though the soft torque made the muscles in her neck throb. "No."

Dad sighed. "Yeah. I guess I can imagine why."

Lori's heart sank. She seriously hoped that his understanding of her pain was merely surface level—she didn't need her good-for-nothing woes picked up on and fretted about.

Wanting to shift his focus to other matters—as well as piece together all the details of her incident that she wasn't privy to—she asked, "What happened to me?"

She immediately regretted her curiosity when it appeared that, judging by the way he looked to the side and lowered his head, her question had driven him to reflect on a past that he wasn't too keen on revisiting so soon. However, he finally managed to muster up his voice before she could convince him not to.

"Yesterday, you were in a car accident," Dad said, his voice lingering between his normal voice and a whisper. "Afterwards, you were whisked away to Royal Woods General for emergency surgery on your arm."

He breathed heavily into his nose before he continued.

"It was an open reduction and internal fixation on your ulna. They had to put you under general anesthesia while they screwed the bone back in place with steel rods. I wanted to come by yesterday, but the staff said that they needed to observe you right here, in the recovery room. Besides the arm, all you got were a few bruised ribs and a few minor scrapes. It's a miracle that nothing else happened to you."

Lori bit back the urge to disagree, at least with words—last time she checked, miracles were to be celebrated. There clearly wasn't anything about her blunder worth cheering.

"Dr. Taber, the man behind your operation, said that you'll be ready to leave in about a week. Until then, you'll have to stay here and get visits from me and the others."

His last statement tugged at her interest, though she approached the matter with a nervous hilt in her voice. "Where's everyone else?"

Lori couldn't imagine  _exactly_  how her siblings would react to her current state, but she was certain that they'd be less merciful than Dad. It was bad enough that she failed to be a good example for them. The thought of the disappointment and scorn on their faces, as they cast their disapproval on her for being such a failure, sent a sickening shiver up her spine that nearly made her retch.

Thankfully, Dad gave her an answer that quelled her fears—or at least, kept them at bay for the moment.

"The kids are at school, and your mother's at work," Dad said. "She wanted to call the day off to come visit, just like I did, but Feinstein needed her more than Sergei needed me. And speaking of your siblings, along with your mother, they'll drop by to see you tomorrow. Rita and I both decided that it'd be best if they let the incident settle with them for about a day before they gave you a visit."

Her state of comfort waned when she mentally approached the inevitable, something that she had been trying to keep out of her mind up until now—the fate of the other driver was an itch she knew she had to scratch eventually, even if it most likely spelled disaster.

"What happened to the..." Lori steadied her quick, shallow breathing as she swallowed. "...t-the  _other_  driver?"

The weariness on her father's face melted away in an instant as he gave her a reassuring smile.

"Oh, she's fine. You don't have to worry about anything. It's unfortunate that you wound up hurt, but I can assure you that she came out of the accident with hardly a scratch on her."

However, that beam of radiance—the certainty that she hadn't messed up on a scale grander than she could've ever imagined—dampened underneath the shift of Dad's emotions. His smile settled into a frown, setting Lori's heart at unease all over again.

"But speaking of the van, I'm afraid that I've got some bad news," he said. "It's in pretty bad shape. It'll take a few weeks to repair all the damage. That means we'll have to have our neighbors and friends help us out, in the meantime. As a matter of fact, Harold was the one who gave me a lift here. He and Howard even helped the kids get to school.

Unfortunately, Harold has to go to work soon, so he has to come pick me up in about an hour. I could stay longer if I wanted to, given I just take the bus, but I have to get back home so I can look after Lily—I'm glad Mr. Grouse is helping me out in the meantime, but I'd rather not me gone longer than I promised."

The guilt of weighing others down because of her incompetence, however, paled in comparison to the rivulets of woe that trickled into her gut and made her heart skip a beat.

"And well, adding to the fact that your injuries need to be healed up before you can get back on your feet, I'm afraid that means that the family vacation's gonna be canceled. I'm sorry, Lori. We'll just have to do something  _else_  for spring break inst—"

The fact that Dad had stopped, possibly to regard her current expression, barely registered in Lori's mind. She was too heartbroken and shocked to take note of her father's concern to pay him any heed, even after he called out to her.

"Lori?"

She jolted from Dad's touch on her right hand, though it failed to comfort her as it did before. Then, in a sudden burst, shame crushed her like a giant boulder. Her breathing became heavy again, and she could feel the birthing streams of tears stinging her ducts.

Dad squeezed her hand tighter. "Lori, it's okay. It's just a dumb ol' vacation. What matters is that you're okay."

His comfort, as beautiful and encouraging as it should've been, slapped her across the face with biting reproach. It taunted her, reminding her that her family was worse off because of her and would continue to be so as long as she was around to drag them into the vicious cycle of her witlessness.

No one was safe. Everyone she loved would have to bare the burden of a victim, all while propping her up with glib, meaningless words spoken in love to keep her head above water. Suddenly, her reluctance to hide everything seemed so...selfish— _criminally_  selfish, even.

She deluded herself into thinking that she was helping them out, but all she did was keep them in the dark of her ugly side. And what was worse, she hadn't spared that truth to Bobby yet was willing to enable future tragedies in her family by "suffering in silence". Her so-called penance was laughable at best and downright disgusting at worst.

' _Just like you.'_

Bubbling anger ran over her like molten lava, much like her cheeks ere run over by a thin stream of tears. Despite her self-hatred, she managed to keep her tone from wavering too from emotion.

"No," Lori said firmly. "No, it's not okay.  _Nothing_  about this is okay. Don't you get it? Look how badly I messed up for everyone."

"But, Lor−"

"No. I don't want to hear it. I can't ignore the truth, Dad, and I'm sick of leaving you all in the dark just so I can get by another day without you and Mom doing the right thing and getting rid of me."

She couldn't quite make out Dad's horror-stricken face, but the visual was enough to make her shudder. Still, she maintained enough composure not to be overwhelmed and turn into a bawling mess.

In the breadth of second, Dad's shock formed into concern that was laced with authoritative sternness.

"What? Why would we  _ever_  want to get rid of you?" he asked. "What on Earth would make you ever think we'd want that?"

His somewhat accusatory tone made Lori shrink back a little, but she refused to take anything she said back.

"Because I've been nothing but a headache to my family since the day I was born," she said firmly. "I wasn't good enough to do one simply task. Because of that, I put myself in a position where I'm basically forcing you and Mom to cover for a car accident  _and_  my hospital bills.

All that money you scrounged up to spend on our vacation, which I literally destroyed, is being wasted on me. Oh, and let's not forget that until the van's fixed, other people have to dedicate some of their precious time into taking care of us."

Her father seemed to try and cut her off—no doubt an attempt to lighten the burden of her crimes to make her feel better—but she cut him off before he could.

"And that's just the stuff that I did  _yesterday_. Need I remind you that it's thanks to me, your time at the DHCC, my younger siblings' night with their babysitter,  _and_  Carol Pingrey's babysitting experience was ruined because of me?"

"Lori, c'mon, that's−"

"You know who would've been able to manage what you asked of me yesterday? Leni. Guess why she couldn't do that? Because yours truly was petty enough to make sure she wouldn't get her driver's license. And let's not forget that I take the responsibilities that you give me for my own benefit, just because I'm not special enough to stand on my own sense of pride. What do I have to show for all my time on Earth besides a mile-long rap sheet of screw-ups and heinous actions?

Meanwhile, my siblings give you a reason to be proud parents. They're all wonderful and amazing. I wouldn't blame you if you were relieved that I was the exception and not the standard."

By now, Dad was undoubtedly dumbfounded, stunned into silence—his hand laid still on Lori's while he wore an utterly confused and unsettled look on his face. In her mind, Lori was finally starting to get through to him and all he could do was listen as she bore her wounded soul to him. It was liberating but terrifying all the same—Dad was bound to lose his patience, after stomaching all he could stand, and leave her in the hospital to contemplate her evil deeds while she rotted.

' _But it's what you deserve. Don't you ever forget that.'_

And Lori pushed on, knowing that once he did just that, he'd have ten perfectly good kids to go home to.

"I should be grateful that you've cared for me for so long, despite bringing misery on your heads all the time," Lori continued, tears no longer flowing. "But the way I show my appreciation is unforgivable. Whether it's dragging my siblings into the mud by putting my sense of self-worth over their happiness or being so useless that I'm unreliable for the most effortless jobs, all I do is prove that the biggest accident out of any of this is  _me_ —it was an accident that you had to get a such a disappointment like me before you had ten better children."

And that's when a sordid, but perfectly fair, thought crossed her mind. It wouldn't be just for her siblings to to be anything but disgusted if such a notion sprouted in  _their_  heads, but it suited her like a glove.

That didn't, however, stop her body from trembling and her stomach from being pelted by nauseating pangs.

"You know what? It would've...i-it would've been better if I had died in that car wreck. Even if you had to get to Grand Rapids without the van, at least I wouldn't be holding you down like this."

Lori had bought Dad' silence for pensive contemplation up until  _this_  point—even if she was able to believe that he finally understood how far gone and hopeless she was, there was no way that he was going to think that she was better off dead.

And lo and behold, he expressed such a thought when he suddenly burst into tears and wrapped her up in a hug once more. This time, instead of mumbling about how much he loved and cherished her, his cries were interspersed with apologies.

"I'm...I'm s-sorry, Lori," he muttered. "I-I'm so sorry."

Throughout the duration, Lori said nothing as she sat in stony silence. The thing that was paramount, however, was that despite being embraced by a father's love, she  _felt_  nothing.

* * *

_**A FEW HOURS LATER…** _

* * *

For the first time in twenty-four hours, Lincoln felt an emotion other than sadness or guilt. Standing outside of Lori and Leni's bedroom, the immense misgiving in his chest added a hundred pounds of weight—his knees shook, the bones in his legs felt like squirming jelly, his breathing was labored, and his heart thrummed painfully in an erratic cycle.

On a normal day, approaching Leni Loud was the easiest thing anyone could do. Even if someone had wronged her, she was usually open to forgiveness pretty easily.

But last time Lincoln checked, he  _hadn't_  made things easy.

As he contemplated about the possibility of cutting his losses and heading to his room, he still felt remorse for how he had been behaving lately and couldn't imagine that Leni would be open to letting him back in her good graces. Leni's words had stung, but the fact that she stormed away in disgust hurt him even more. He had sickened her so much that she didn't think that he was worth her time anymore.

But it didn't take long until he realized that, despite how his feelings felt raw and bleeding from her verbal lashing, she was one hundred percent right. He couldn't deny that he and Carol had been wronged, but what he did to Lori was far worse. Just like Leni had said, Lori had never condemned Lincoln like he had done to her.

He treated her with contempt, allowing himself to harbor long-lasting hatred.

He disregarded her pain, even to the point where he said that it didn't matter.

He acted as if she wasn't even family, like she was some kind of hardened, unrepentant criminal.

And yet, she probably vied for his affection, probably with some way to make it up to him. At the moment of his epiphany, he could do nothing but lay in his bed, paralyzed by guilt and shame as he wept bitterly into his pillow. After his tears were spent, he resigned himself to doing three things at breakneck speed; give Lori the biggest little brother hug in the world, give her the forgiveness that she desperately needed, and beg for forgiveness of his own.

But before he could even make it halfway out of his room, he had heard his mother bawling dramatically from downstairs. When he decided to check out on the commotion, he was quickly joined by a few of his sisters—Luna, Lola, Lana, Lisa, and Leni—as they rushed down the stairs to see what had been happening.

They had found Mom on the couch, sobbing in her hands and babbling unintelligibly. Dad was by her side with an arm around her shoulder, looking almost as broken up as she was. When he had noticed that they arrived, his next words nearly made him stagger backwards, as if he was punched in the gut:

"Royal Woods General just called us. Lori's there right now. She was in a car accident."

His tears had already been wasted early, so all he could do was stare at his father in disbelief as his breath hitched in a gasp. His sisters, on the other hand, were rendered to mournful sobbing on the spot. Though all of their heartbreaking wails were equally as heartbreaking, he had felt for Leni the most. She was wound up in so much grief because of her concern for Lori and his nasty treatment of her.

And now...now she was in the hospital, as banged up and broken as his mind allowed him to think that she was. After that bombshell was dropped, he hardly touched his food at dinner and went to bed early. Though Lori's well-being kept him up long throughout the night, his relationship with Leni troubled him, too. He had done so much to possibly lose one sister because of his reprehensible behavior—he couldn't bear the thought of losing  _another_  one.

He had gone through the motions today at school, drifting about aimlessly as he went from class to class with Lori and Leni on his mind. Despite his streak of misfortune, he had been able to make amends with Clyde as they rode to school. That came with the price of telling Clyde what had happened to Lori, though he was pleased that he was happy to hear that his best friend would be trying to reconcile his damaged bond with her as soon as he was able to.

But the biggest hurdle to leap over was here in the present, frozen in place as he tried to muster up the courage to knock on the door and hope that Leni was willing to invite him in. He didn't need to be an ace sleuth to know that Leni—who was clearly walking around with the most sadness saddled on her back—would, at best, be too secluded in her misery to want to talk to him.

At the worst? She would still be as disgusted as ever. She probably would've rubbed salt in the wound of his punctured conscience by asking him if he had gotten what he wanted out of Lori's accident. Even worse, she probably resented him. After all, it wasn't as if he left her with any other choi—

Lincoln shook his head, clearing away those horrible thoughts.  _No_. Leni wouldn't hate him. Resenting a sibling was a mistake that  _he_  had to own up to—it wouldn't be fair to assess Leni under that standard, especially after she had chewed him out yesterday.

That revelation gave him the surge of confidence to brush past his fears and rap on her door with a few timid knocks.

"Its open," he heard Leni say almost immediately.

Lincoln didn't know whether to count himself lucky or blessed. On one hand, not only did Leni not sound...well,  _as_  dejected as she had been yesterday, but she was willing to let him in right away. On the other hand, she didn't know that it was  _him_. He knew that she wouldn't hate him, but the chance of her sending him away made him flinch in equal measure. Still, now was as best of a chance that he was going to get to make things right.

With that, he opened the door and turned to close it behind him once he entered the room. Expecting her to be somewhat surly once she realized who her visitor was, he was taken off his stride when he found Leni on her bed, sitting on its edge and looking at him with warm eyes and a half-hearted smile. Despite her friendly disposition, Lincoln could tell that she had been crying recently—crumpled-up tissues littered the floor around her bed and her eyes were puffy and red.

What was even more obvious, was her unspoken invitation to approach her and speak his mind. Still, he found himself pinned in place, as if large nails pierced through his feet and affixed him into the carpet.

The prolonged silence finally got Leni to act. Standing up, she got strolled over to Lincoln, stopping once she was right in front of him. Then, in a gesture that Lincoln found downright odd, she stretched out her arms towards him.

"C'mere," she said softly.

Lincoln blinked as he felt a lump form in his throat. "Huh?"

"You look like you could use a hug."

Without even having to think, Lincoln moved in and hugged Leni as tightly as he could. When he felt her arms gently secure him place as his face was buried in her midriff, his emotions overwhelmed him and brought him to tears.

"Ssssshhhhh," Leni cooed as she stroked his hair. "Everything's okay, Lincoln."

Her words wrought more tears, though Lincoln couldn't help but feel somewhat relieved—he had no idea what Leni was referring to (their relationship or Lori's well-being), but her amenity was therapeutic.

He spent the next few minutes weeping as loud and long as he could until he had had his fill. He pulled his face away to look up at Leni, who looked like she was on the verge of shedding tears herself.

"Leni, I'm...I'm sorry," Lincoln said, fighting through his sore, throbbing gullet as it panged with each syllable. "About everything. You were right about Lori, you were right about the way I treated he−"

He coughed when the strain on his throat caught up with him, forcing him to take a short break from his speech.

"A-and I just want you to know," he continued, "that I didn't want to see Lori get hurt. I know you probably don't have the best opinion of me, but please...please believe me when I tell you that I'm not happy about what happened to her."

Leni nodded. "I know."

Lincoln took a deep breath and smiled. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

And he truly meant every word of it, so much so that now he wanted to make sure that he could return the favor in making Leni's next few days a little easier on herself.

"Hey, Leni?"

"Yeah?"

"Mind if I crash with you until Lori gets out of the hospital? I figured you'd want some company until then."

She didn't beam as much as he would've liked, but he still took in her genuine smile all the same.

"Sure," Leni said. "I'd like that a lot."

All things considered, Lincoln should've been satisfied. Heck, he should've been over the moon. He had assurance that he still had Leni's love and though he couldn't predict the future, he had reason to believe that Lori was going to come out of this alive—after all, his parents had the chance to let him and his sisters in on a possibly fatal outcome when they told them about Lori's surgery and expected recovery before they all went to school.

But still, a nagging concern was presently festering in a dark corner of his mind. He could feel it being nourished with every passing glance he gave it, but he couldn't help but approach the million dollar question:

What was he going to do when he visited Lori?

* * *

Lynn Sr. knew that this was all his fault.

He could've shifted the blame to the cruel hand of fate putting his precious daughter in such critical condition, but he knew that he'd be a cowardly fool to think that he didn't have a part in doubling—no,  _tripling_ —the chances of misfortune coming into play with his negligence.

He knew that Lori was in pain, but those cutting, self-loathing words couldn't have possibly come about just from one car accident. No, she had been carrying those destructive, horribly untrue thoughts for a while. It was in the middle of her self-castigation that everything clicked into place for him and he knew, he just  _knew_ , that not only was this his fault…

...he  _could've_  stopped this. He was wise enough to know that Lori needed counseling, but foolish enough to give her the choice whether to indulge on such a request or not.  _Twice_ , he had been told misgivings about Lori's demeanor and he batted away those concerns with callous indifference.

And for what? Because he gave his daughter too much credit? Because he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and see her for a responsible young woman who was capable of making good choices, despite all signs pointing to an underlying problem that desperately needed fixing?

 _No_. No, it was more than just imbuing her with a sense of independence that was far from reasonable. Unlike Leni and Rita, he was flat out  _blind_. He had the opportunity to see any signs of distress when he went up to the attic to check up on her, yet he saw nothing. If he had, he wouldn't have brewed up such a volatile cocktail of imminent catastrophe and handed it over to Lori, someone who was clearly not the soundest of mind, to drink.

And so, with a heavy heart and the failure of a good father weighing him down, he had returned home with a conscience that was riddled with gaping, bloody stripes from his self-flagellation.

There wasn't a chance in the world that he could've felt otherwise, even if he was certain that Rita—who was presently sitting next to him in the empty dining room—would try to tell him that he shouldn't be so hard on himself.

He found himself in this position at his wife's request. When she came back home from work, she wanted to know how Lori was holding up. Though his daughter's words sliced fresh cuts into his soul with each meditation, Lynn Sr. accepted that he'd have no choice but to recall the visit with every gruesome detail. Thus, he had told her that she'd let her know everything after the kids had gone upstairs after dinner.

With a heavy sigh, Lynn Sr. looked his wife in the eye and winced at her beautiful grin—that lovely expression would change soon enough.

* * *

By the time he was finished, Lynn Sr. almost regretted being so straightforward. Rita's reaction was much... _much_  worse than he thought was possible.

The most heartbreaking outcome he conjured up would be her being driven to tears, much like what had happened immediately after receiving that call from RWG. Instead of that, however, came something far worse than sadness that had the slimmest chance of being reconciled…

 _Fear_. She was wore it like a second skin, paling out the vibrant color in her face as her pupils dilated and her breath came out ragged. When her hand absentmindedly came up to her chest, as if to quell her tortured heart, Lynn Sr. sprang up from his chair, walked over to his wife, and held her shoulders in a reflexive gesture of comfort. It only managed to get her to look up at him, though her panicked stare never diminished in magnitude.

"I...I-I think I know what's happening with our daughter," Rita said.

The nervous tension spread through to him like wildfire, though Lynn Sr. felt that he must've felt twice as much pressure for not being in the know—even if he had the tiniest inkling about where she was leading him towards.

"You do?" he answered back in a feeble whisper.

Rita nodded. "My aunt suffered from the same thing, and it sounds like Lori's going through what she did."

Those wisps of lacerating guilt back to lash him all over again, but that paled to the agonizing sorrow that grieved him deeply when Rita said, "I don't want to believe that it's true, but I think there's a great chance that Lori's clinically depressed."


	7. Chapter 7

It may have been an educated guess, but Rita's chilling proclamation did its job in blasting Lynn Sr. in the chest with the force of a point-blank shotgun discharge. But he did nothing to ease the discomfort as it churned his stomach fit to burst, as if drones of squirming maggots were blindly bustling about for their freedom. In the end, he knew it was pointless to try to pick out the bits of shrapnel out of his soul from the most devastating bombshell he had ever heard in his life.

The futility in denial was as clear as day—all it took was one haunting trip down the memory lane to render the prospect of hope a foolish waste of time. What else  _other_  than depression could force such poisonous words out of his daughter's mouth? How could she ever equate her own life as a steep cost to her family's happiness if depression  _wasn't_  behind the wheel?

But there was another question that blanketed his sense of direction like a thick fog, and he cast it out in the open with a tremor of uncertainty in his voice.

"What are we gonna do, Rita?"

Through her apprehension, he could sense that she was just as—if not more—scared out of her wits than he was out of his. And yet, here he was, leaning on her for guidance. He was tragically clueless, yet his wife decided not to reproach him for his ineptitude.

"Well," Rita said, her tone conveying careful consideration, "my aunt Bridget got diagnosed after she went to see her GP. We can do that for Lori once she's cleared to leave the hospital. In the meantime, we also need to let the kids know that Lori's going through a tough time right now, and they can't be disappointed if she..."

The spark of the confidence in her eyes dimmed to quivering embers as her face fell—Lynn Sr.'s own sense of reprieve suffered a heavy fracture that was further exacerbated when Rita completed her thoughts with, "...well, if she's not going to be in the best of moods when she sees them."

He was brought back to reality now, his foolish relief snatched away before it could continue to greedily pacify his hope in a quick, mess-free fix. His hands drifted away from his wife's shoulders, he stumbled back in his chair, and slumped—he wore defeat in his features and body language, but he bore the markings of tortured, broken man in his spirit.

"Lynn?"

He couldn't bother to look up at her—his downcast gaze remained on the corner of the dining table, where an empty chair tormented him with the reminder that because of him, it wasn't occupied when his children were eating here earlier.

He did, however, flinch when he felt one of Rita's hands slip over one of his. It was the same vain gesture he did to give Lori some remission, and its empty warmth came back to bite him as her fingers laid cold against his skin.

"You don't have to act as if this is all your fault," she said. "The truth is, we  _both_  should've kept a closer eye on her. And we both made it worse by punishing her like we did; I can't imagine that made her feel better about herself."

Lynn Sr. sighed. And  _there_  it was; the inevitability of Rita's attempt to ease his guilt only made him feel worse, especially since she had decided that she deserved to consider herself a member of what  _should've_  been a one-man guilty party. It wasn't fair to say that she was worthy of being accountable just because  _his_  nonsense dulled her sense of responsibility when Lori needed it the most.

But the magnitude of his suffering only intensified when he realized that she wouldn't be in the mood to be convinced otherwise. He thought, without any scorn against her, that it was such misfortune that she couldn't have had that resolve earlier—even if it meant he'd be in for an earful of a venomous diatribe, it would've paled in comparison to...to all of  _this_.

"But," Rita continued, "we're not going to be of any use to Lori if we sit around and feel sorry for ourselves. Now that we knew there's a problem, we can give her the attention that she needs."

He, at last, perked his head up to give Rita attention. It wasn't too much to ask for him to try to scrounge up some mettle, but he couldn't do so at the cost of a lie.

"I'll give Lori whatever she needs," Lynn Sr. said, "but I can't forgive myself, Rita. Nothing I can do for her will change that."

Rita nodded. "Truthfully, I feel the same way about myself. But we have to remember that the children come first, not our self-loathing."

With that, she pulled her hand, got up, and gave her husband a peck on the forehead.

"You coming to bed?" she asked, her body turned towards the living room.

Lynn Sr. shook his head. "Not now, Rita. I just need to...let this all settle for a little bit."

He was thankful that she respected his wishes and did just that when she departed. Now that he was finally was left alone, he could allow himself to weep without interruption—it was necessary to purge what he felt was a bottomless expanse of his grief before tomorrow came. Whether he was ready or not, his children needed him, and he'd be ineffective with the shackles of his misery rendering him unable to do anything but squander his time on self-pity.

His tears and self-absorbed heartache was spent—or at least, kept at bay—when the clock struck one in the morning.

* * *

For the first time in quite a while, Lincoln found himself in his bedroom in the early afternoon of Tuesday. He could say the same for his other siblings, whom he presumed were in their respective rooms and getting ready for the day ahead.

Or rather, the  _visit_  ahead.

As if sleeping in Lori's bed the night before wasn't enough of an oddity on its own, the fact that his parents were waiting for him and his sisters in the hallway only begged a series of questions from them.

Their news made his heart sink, the sensation bred from worry and joy—Mom and Dad had decided that instead of their children bothering with school, they had given them a choice in how they wanted to spend their day. They could either accept their proposal of calling their respective schools ahead of time and requesting that they could have the day off and visit Lori or they could go to school and see Lori once they got back.

The acceptance of the former was both immediate and unanimous, though Lincoln had to swallow down the bubbling brew of turbulent emotions from making him think to reconsider. Either way, he was going to have to see Lori one way or the day, so he might as well take the option that gave him a day off from school.

But still...yesterday hadn't helped him at all—he was  _still_  at a loss for the words that both he and Lori needed for each other. At first, he had been eager to rely on Leni—the only person to have the faintest idea of what he had felt for Lori—but he deemed that a pointless effort. He knew better than to regard Leni as unreliable, especially on matters of the heart, but could  _she_  relate to feeling such contempt towards a loved one? If it was obvious that Leni didn't hate him for treating Lori like he had been doing—which was perhaps the number one opportunity for her to come the closest to approaching sibling-centered vitriol—then there was enough reason to believe that a wide chasm separated him from a possible city of refuge.

In the end, he had to face this alone, and it was part of his just dues for putting Lori through the wringer.

Presently, he was reclined on his bed, his head resting against his pillow as his legs crossed. He was too wound-up in reflection and planning to bide his time with anything recreational. He had to think of something fast because the McBrides would be coming to pick them up in about half an hour.

But the weight of time against him grew heavier with a distraction—his open laptop, resting on his desk, started beeping. The telltale sound of a video chat text notification made both Lincoln's ears and his curiosity perk up. The last time he checked, it was only a little past twelve. The only people who video chatted with him went to school, meaning that whoever was trying to contact him was staying at home like he was.

When he shuffled out of bed, walked over to the laptop, and gazed at the notification blinking in the bottom right corner of the screen.

"Huh? Ronnie Anne?"

The profile picture matched his observations, but the message was what truly piqued his interest:

" _we need to talk. chat with me as soon as u can"_

Whatever it was that Ronnie Anne wanted to talk about must've warranted face-to-face communication. Otherwise, she could've sufficed to just text or call him on his cellphone. Deciding not to wonder what she could want, Lincoln opted to fire up a private video chat session as soon as he could.

Once he did, he waited for Ronnie Anne to enter. It only took a few seconds for her to do so, and before he knew it, Lincoln found himself staring into the narrowed, icy eyes of one visibly irate Santiago tween.

Lincoln gulped, his heart beating a little faster. He usually knew how to get himself out of a tight spot, but there was nothing he felt he could do about a Ronnie Anne that was angry with him for reasons that he couldn't think of. Thus, he was certain that the only way of placating her was with a smile and a wave.

"H-hey, Ronnie Anne," Lincoln said, tugging at his collar with his other hand. "How's it g−"

"Where's Lori?"

Lincoln's hands dropped, along with his grin. He could only blink at the screen, trying to process both the question and the reason behind Ronnie Anne asking it in the first place. His contemplation (lasting all of two seconds) had evidently grown weary on her patience, for the next thing Lincoln knew, Ronnie Anne had leaned a little closer to her screen.

" _WHERE'S. LORI?"_

Lincoln yelped, his blood pressured spiking a bit. "Woah, woah, woah! Take it easy!"

Though it wasn't an intentional tactic, his frightened reaction must've done enough to effectively quell her temper—the way she shrank back in her chair and loosened her angry snarl was enough to make Lincoln believe that was worth hazarding that kind of guess.

"Uh...sorry," Ronnie Anne mumbled sheepishly, her voice sounding noticeably scratchy. "I got a little carried a..."

A sudden, throaty cough prevented her from finishing her sentence, and it inspired Lincoln's next thought.

"Hey, uh, are you sick, by any chance?" he asked, watching as Ronnie Anne reached down and pulled up a tissue into view.

"Yep," she said before blowing her nose and tossing the tissue over her shoulder. "To make a long story short, Carl got sick with a cold, then uncle Carlos caught what he had, then aunt Frida caught what  _he_  had, then  _I_  wound up getting hit with it."

She grabbed another tissue to blow her nose, then cleared her throat. "Now, I gotta stay home while grandma Rosa takes care of me and everyone else who's sick."

"Eh, that doesn't sound so bad. At least you don't have to go to school," Lincoln said. "Though, it still stinks that you're not feeling well."

Ronnie Anne groaned. "Dude, being sick isn't the worst part. Those home remedies are the  _real_  pain. You ever had to drink syrup made out of honey and onions before?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Luck you. Believe me, that stuff'll only make you feel worse."

Lincoln chuckled. "I'll try to keep that in mind."

Another watery cough broke the brief second of the proceeding silence, and it didn't take long for Ronnie Anne to ask a question of her own.

"But you know, now that I think about it, what're  _you_  doing at home?" she asked, giving Lincoln a puzzled look. "You don't look sick to me."

"I'm home because Mom and Dad excused me and my sisters from going to school today," Lincoln said. "We'll be leaving pretty soon, though."

"Why's that?"

"Remember how you were asking me where Lori is?" Lincoln broke out an amused smirk. "Quite angrily, might I add?"

He laughed as Ronnie Anne shook her head and folded her arms. "Yeah, yeah, rub it in," she muttered, her grin revealing no ill-will. "But yeah, I remember."

"She's..." His merriment withered when he recalled his father's horrid announcement from Sunday, the memory nearly opening up his tear ducts. "...she's...i-in the hospital. She was in a car accident a few days ago."

He watched as Ronnie Anne's eyes widened and her hands flew over her mouth. Though it pained him to see his friend reeled back in abject horror, it was that sort of response that he was looking for—no matter what kind of bone Ronnie Anne clearly had to pick with Lori, it didn't stop her from feeling empathy for her going through such a horrid disaster.

Ronnie Anne's hands came down to her lap, and she looked fit to squirm out of her skin from all the fidgeting her clasped hands were doing. "I'm sorry, Lincoln. I had no idea."

Lincoln had a feeling she wasn't  _just_  apologizing because she felt sorry for what happened to Lori—he could imagine that her demanding that she see a victim of a car accident, with the intent of chewing them out over...something, didn't give off a good impression.

Rather than bring his intuition out in the light—for Ronnie Anne to either confirm or deny—Lincoln decided to cover her on both ends when he said, "It's alright. According to my parents, she's recovering just fine. She should be out soon."

When she managed to crack a weak smile, Lincoln thought it necessary to...well, get to the bottom of what Ronnie Anne's beef with Lori was in the first place.

"Anyway, what is it you want from Lori?"

Ronnie Anne's face hardened a little. "An explanation."

Lincoln shrugged. "About what?"

Before she could answer, Ronnie Anne let out another cough, followed by her tearing through yet another tissue. At this point, she looked even more miserable, though Lincoln wasn't quite sure if it was just from her stuffed-up nose or because of the story she had yet to tell.

"Well," Ronnie Anne began, "it all started a few days ago. I noticed that Bobby wasn't acting the same as usual."

"How so?" Lincoln asked.

"He just looked so...dejected. In fact, he  _still_  does. He rarely smiles, he's always skipping out on watching  _Dream_   _Boat_  with everyone else, and I even heard grandpa Hector complaining that he was going through the motions at the bodega today."

Ronnie Anne took a break to clear her throat once again. "But what makes it worse is that no matter how many times I've tried to ask him what was bothering him, he keeps insisting that there's nothing to worry about."

"He did it again last night, before we went to the dining room for dinner." Her brow furrowed and her frown tightened. "It was like...like I didn't even matter to him. He was in pain, and he didn't even trust that I could help him."

Lincoln winced. Yeah, that sounded like it was pretty awful. All the same, despite how guilty it made him, he wanted to press on with the matter further rather than dwell on Ronnie Anne's pain.

"Sorry about that," Lincoln said with utmost earnestness. "Did anything else happen?"

Ronnie Anne nodded. "Yeah. I overheard Bobby talking with Carlota last night. I guess he felt that he could trust  _her_ about his problems instead of me."

She sighed and breathed heavily through her nose in a rush of pent-up exasperation.

"Anyway," she continued, "that's when I heard  _everything_. Apparently, about a week ago, Lori left a message on Bobby's voicemail."

The pause she made allowed Lincoln to lean in with captivated interest brimming in his eyes.

"She broke up with him."

Lincoln gasped and leaned back in his chair, nearly sending himself toppling down on the floor.

W-what?!" he stammered when he started to gain his bearings and look at Ronnie Anne with disbelief. "Lori?! As in  _my_  sister Lori?!"

Ronnie Anne rolled her eyes. "Well,  _duh_. You think he was dating another Lori behind  _your_  Lori's back or something?"

Lincoln ignored her snarky comment, but only because he was too caught up in trying to process her declaration. As far as he was concerned, Lori would never willingly part ways with Bobby. Perhaps if she were coerced to do so under the most extreme of conditions (like a gun pointed to her head), but otherwise? Absolutely not.

"That's...wow, that's nuts," Lincoln said. "Why'd she do that?"

Ronnie Anne huffed out an angry breath. "That's the thing; I don't have a clue. All I could gather was that she dropped it on him out of nowhere, for pretty much no good reason at all."

At this point, Lincoln didn't need anything more to understand where Ronnie Anne was coming from; he was sure that he'd have a few choice words for Bobby if he ever found out that he had dumped Lori out of the blue.

"No wonder you were mad at her," he said.

Ronnie Anne frowned and made a buzzer noise from the back of her phlegm-filled throat.

"Wrong. I'm  _still_  mad at her. I just don't want to yell at someone who got in the hospital after a car accident. When she gets out and she's fully recovered, let her know that the both of us need to have a little chat about her breaking my brother's heart."

In an instant, Lincoln came up with what he felt was a better alternative than that.

"Wait a second," he said with a smile. "I could always just ask her why she did it once I get to the hospital. Then, I can come back later and−"

" _No_." Ronnie Anne shook her head. "I wanna hear it from  _her_."

' _Well...so much for that,'_  Lincoln thought with a twinge of nervousness. All the same, he told her that that was more than fair.

But just then, his previous bouts of anxiety came back to haunt him when he remembered that the time was winding down, and he  _still_  hadn't come up with a good place to start his reconciliation with Lori. Though, as he soon found him, Ronnie Anne seemed to have him figured out before he could call an end to the video chat.

"Look, I don't wanna hold you up any longer," she said. "I know you gotta get going soon. But all the same, thanks for listening."

"Don't mention it. Thanks for telling me what happened."

Suddenly, Ronnie Anne's gaze softened, and Lincoln could almost make out the tender essence behind her bright, brown eyes.

"And look, despite everything I said, I seriously hope Lori gets better," she said solemnly. "She may have been a jerk to Bobby, but she doesn't deserve to be in the hospital because of it."

Lincoln smiled. "Thanks, Ronnie Anne."

She tried to offer a smile of her own, but it twisted into a grimace as she held the side of her head with one of her hands and coughed into her other one.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to learn to keep my gag reflex under control for the next rounds of honey and onion syrup coming my way."

Despite herself, she mustered a laugh in sync with Lincoln's. After that, Ronnie Anne signed off, leaving Lincoln nearly back to where he was before. The only reason he felt it proper to use "nearly" was because, if anything, what Ronnie Anne had told him made him feel even  _worse_  about Lori.

Within the period that Leni had supposedly noticed that Lori wasn't acting like herself, his eldest sister did the unthinkable and broke up with Bobby without rhyme or reason. Though Ronnie Anne turned down his offer to get the truth straight from the horse's mouth and relay it to her, he still couldn't help but be curious for his own sake.

But that would have to come  _after_  he made things right…

...even if he  _still_  had not idea how that was going to go smoothly.

* * *

It was ironic that in one of the safest places anyone in distress could find themselves in—that being in the hospital—it took everything Lincoln had not to combust from the coils of tension that tightened painfully in his chest as he, his sisters, and his parents quietly sauntered through the bustling halls of Royal Woods General on the way to the recovery room.

The only one to have any sort of idea of his inner turmoil was Leni, who walked alongside him and held his hand gently in her grip while she carried Lily tightly with her other arm. Ordinarily, holding hands with one of his older sisters in public would be a little embarrassing, but Lincoln was willing to take anything he could get to calm down. Still, her grasp, as comforting as it was, still couldn't keep his shallow, quick breathing from squeezing out of his lungs as his heart fluttered with the speed of a hummingbird's wing flaps.

He was  _still_  at a loss for what he was going to do about Lori. And now that he thought about it, his worries were always centered around a scenario where he and Lori were alone together. The harsh reality was that he had nine sisters who were probably champing at the bit to see their eldest sister and rightfully so. Even so, he wasn't sure if he could get so much as a word out with his sisters hanging around, looking on at him intently. It was shameful enough for him to have his ugliest side known to one of his sisters; he couldn't imagine that there wasn't a good chance that at least one of the others would look down on him.

All the same, his morbid musing allowed him to pick up on what his parents were telling him and his sisters at the moment.

"Okay, everyone, I want you all to remember what we talked about before we came here," Mom said.

"That's right," Dad added. "Lori's doing fine, but she's going to need some time to get over the accident. That means that she's might not be all smiles when she sees you."

"In any case, whether she's excited or not, we want you to do two things. One, respect her feelings. They may not be what  _you_  want from her, but that gives none of you the right to force her to 'get over herself'."

"And I trust you all know what the second thing is, right?"

"No acting up," the children said.

"That's right," Mom said. "That means that I better not catch you trying to steal lollipops from one of the nurse's stations again, Lola."

"Or trying to assist doctors with brain surgery, Lisa," Dad said, giving the scientist a pointed look. " _A_ _gain_."

The children who  _weren't_  put on the spot had a good time snickering as the called-out duo muttered angrily at the indignity under their breath as their faces turned beet red.

Well, except for Lincoln. He knew that in a few minutes, there would be no time for laughter.

* * *

Thanks to Dad's last visit, Lori knew what she was in for. That didn't mean that the news of her sibling's imminent visit settled well with her, though.

She had endured another near-sleepless night after her father left her, only she didn't have the familiar accommodations of her bedroom to gaze upon as her broken, drained body laid out against the thinly padded mattress of her hospital bed and her willow blanket draped over her.

She could've asked the nurses for better luxuries, but what good what that do anyone who mattered? She was lucky to have one good arm after what should've ended her life—she shuddered at the thought of those who suffered worse than her yet did nothing to deserve their fates. Who was  _she_  to take from those tortured souls, writhing in agony of a shattered mind and body as their needs demanded around-the-clock heed? It was revolting that she thought of taking that away from them, even if the selfish aspiration lingered for but a second.

' _If Lincoln were here, he'd certainly have a thing or two to save about that.'_

Truthfully,  _any_  of her siblings would—it was just that Lincoln was the most likely to beat anyone else to the punch. He denounced her that horrible night without shame, his bold anger flashing in her mind when the deep recesses of her darkest memories reared their ugly heads to spite her.

And any minute now, that frightful saga would have another chapter added to its ghastly anthology. He'd chew her out and leave the slashed, hollow husk of her dignity out to dry before the others would surround her with malice in their eyes and tear into her without mercy. If she had the gall to beg and cry, they surely wouldn't relent—they'd be wrong to do otherwise.

Mercy and forgiveness were privileges that someone of her disdainful caliber had been revoked of,  _far_  before her most recent succession of harmful deeds wrought such misery on her family and friends.

' _You hate how happy they look despite you. That's why you'll never be satisfied until they always look as sad and ugly as you.'_

If Dad could read between the lines from what she had told him yesterday, he'd know as much himself. And what he did with that knowledge was out of her hands.

"Hey, it's Lori!"

In the wake of that cry, which alerted the attention of several stern-looking staff that immediately shushed the outburst, she also learned that the preparation required to face such a daunting confrontation—literally thirty feet away from her—was also out of hands.

Lana had apparently decided that the consequences of her joyous holler were worth showing the elation on her face…

...which was matched by just about everyone who accompanied her. Their smiles were etched with varying degrees, but the universal message of their delight couldn't have been more apparent to her. She was torn asunder by the display, rendered into mentally babbling on about how this was all just a delusion or an attempt to keep up appearances. She was left without a counter to how either of those possibilities made the slightest bit of sense, but she was far too concerned with the present to bother with answering for her own dilemma.

Because this  _couldn't_  be real. Why? Why were they permitting her the freedom to bask in their glory without shame? How could they not consider the reality that they were in the presence of a wounded, venomous serpent who was  _still_  potent enough to evoke widespread grief?

Her eyes quickly searched for solace, anything that could tear her away from their nauseating naivety, and they locked onto her brother's face. Her heart clenched from panic, even as his features remained softened in her midst. But soon, the sight of his faded smile was lost on her when the swarm of her sisters suddenly shuffled in front of him as they made a beeline over to her.

* * *

At first, it came as a surprise to Lincoln when he was able to see Lori and manage to smile—he was almost certain his nervousness would make him vomit and cry all at once when he and his family finally got to the recovery room and spotted her.

But now, as he watched his sisters rush over to Lori, it made all the sense in the world why his anxiety was taken down several notches. Hearing that Lori was alive and recovering was one thing, but seeing it for himself tugged at his heart like nothing else had done in the past few weeks.

Still, he could only manage a paltry smile and shying away from approaching her any closer, though. Not only was he still not sure where to start with Lori, but he didn't want to be a burden to the lively reunion that was going on. After all, none of his sisters had hurt Lori, and he was certain that she wouldn't forget that. In the end, it was only fair that she get to soak up the love and attention that she needed before he dampened the mood with his presence.

He jumped a little when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Mom looking down at him with Dad at her side.

"Something wrong, Lincoln?" she asked.

His first instinct was to lie, but he quickly realized that it would do him no good. He'd just be back to where he was now, unsure of how to approach his own sister and get some one-on-one time with her to mend the fences. He might as well appeal to his parents for help—it wasn't like he had to tell them  _exactly_  what he had to do.

"I just...I need a little time to talk to Lori," Lincoln said.

Dad shrugged. "You could always do it n−"

" _Alone_."

Lincoln watched, silently hoping for agreement, as his parents looked at each other for a brief moment before looking back at him.

"What for?" Mom asked.

"It's just really important, Mom," Lincoln said.

"We get that, but what do you want us to do about it, son?" Dad asked. "Your sisters deserve to be with Lori as much as you."

Lincoln felt himself growing more desperate with each passing second. The jig was almost up yet he was nowhere closer to getting what he needed. But the window of opportunity only shrank as he continued to stall, so he decided that being direct was the only thing he could do.

"Look, I did something really bad to her, and I want to apologize," Lincoln said. "I just don't want anyone else to know what it was."

Once again, he found himself at the mercy of tense silence as he watched his parents shuffle away to talk to each other a few feet away from him. The pressure was greatly alleviated when they returned with smiles on their faces, the promise of a pleasing outcome hopefully not out of the question.

"Very well," Dad said. "We'll let you have some one-on-one time with Lori."

"But we have to let your sisters have their time too," Mom added as she looked on at the touching scene of her daughters coming together again. "But don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to get whatever you need off your chest."

Lincoln grinned. "Thanks, Mom and Dad. I really appreciate it."

In fact, he appreciated their generosity more than he feared for the worst. Surely, it took the possibility of losing out on this chance to get him to treasure the opportunity to make amends in the first place, no matter how scary the unknown might've been to him.

But for now, he'd watch from afar until it was time for his moment. His sisters were blocking his view from Lori, but he didn't need to see her to know that she was getting the best treatment in the world from those who mattered to her the most.

He just hoped that, after everything was said and done, Lori was willing to believe that she mattered to him too.

* * *

Even as the minutes ticked on by a plodding crawl, Lori had the presence of mind and a strong enough will to keep her smile long and her answers to her sisters' questions short. Being as noncommittal as she was, thankfully, didn't arouse suspicion of the empty dullness that their joy did nothing to slough away like dead skin cells.

It was obvious, based on their excited fervor, that Dad had decided to keep them in the dark. It confused her, at first, why he'd want to be so discrete with what should've been the beginning of a violent witch hunt, run by siblings who were irate for her treachery and for the years of deception it took to for her to keep up appearances.

But as each of her sisters hugged and kissed her, one after another, it slowly dawned on her  _why_  this was happening. Their happiness would be deprived if they knew the truth—they'd  _never_  waste their affection on someone who they knew wasn't worth their time, much less their charity. Dad kept the wool over their eyes for their innocence, not for  _her_  sake. He was just working on borrowed time, trying to keep the family together as best as he could while he figured out the perfect way to quietly sweep her under the rug like the dirty, little secret that she was.

She'd play the part of the deceiver again, but only as long as her ailing, feeble mind could keep up the act.

But in the back of her head, one constant drove her to nearly crack under the pressure of her guise and burst into tears. Her sisters' smothering didn't make her forget Lincoln, who was standing afar with Mom and Dad. She didn't need to know why he refused to come closer, even if that smile from earlier betrayed the notion that he wasn't resentful towards her. Still, it hurt her to know that he couldn't even manage to grin and bear when he didn't have to stomach the sight of her by himself—he had nine beautiful, amazing, thoughtful sisters to lean on, and even  _that_  wasn't enough for him.

She probably would've shed a tear had it not been for the merciful intervention of her father, who pushed himself through the mob of her sisters to get to her side.

"Alright ladies, we have to wrap it up for today," he said, his announcement earning a collective groan from his able-bodied daughters. "The McBrides need their car for the rest of the day, and they have to get to work pretty soon."

"C'mon, Pop-Star," Luna begged, clasping her hands together as if she were praying. "Just give us a couple more minutes to come together, yeah?"

Lynn chimed in next. "Yeah, what she said."

"Our reunion has yet to reach optimal levels of heartwarming satisfaction. You must prolong our visit until that occurs," Lisa insisted.

Lily pointed at Lori. " _Oree!"_

"'Fraid not, kiddos," Dad said. "Until your mother and I rent a car, this is the way it's gonna have to be. Now, let's get a move on."

Lori looked on as her sisters shuffled away one by one, waving goodbye to her as they headed towards the recovery room exit. Her father joined them, but not before his next words raked her bones with a chill bred from uncertainty.

"Oh, by the way," he told her as he turned around, "Lincoln has something he wants to say to you."

She struggled to keep her smile from falling, but she succumbed to the dread, anyway.

* * *

It didn't take long for Lincoln to find himself alone, his sisters and parents having left him behind as they made their way to the waiting room.

Everything had worked according to Mom and Dad's plan. The McBrides really  _were_  coming around to pick everyone up, but they wouldn't be coming as soon as Dad had let on to his sisters.

" _I'll text you when it's time to go. Make your time count,"_  Mom had told him before her departure.

He felt a twinge of guilt for cutting into everyone's time, but he pacified his consciousness with the reminder that he and his sisters could always come around tomorrow to visit Lori again.

And most importantly, Lori needed this.  _He_  needed this. And he had decided that, despite how his vindictive treatment of his sister demanded a great measure of penance, he'd pour out his soul without some mental script guiding him. If anything, it was his unfiltered, genuine feelings that were the most appropriate approach.

Getting to the bottom of her break-up with Bobby could wait for another day—Lori deserved nothing less than his atonement.

He was astonished that, even as he walked over to her, he could only feel little twines of nervous energy twisting through his gut instead of volcanic streams of panic bubbling through the veins of his brain as he struggled to keep his resolution afloat choppy waters.

Meditating on that feeling, however, failed to hold his interest like his current situation. Now, he found himself by Lori's bedside, his hands gripping on the railing as he leaned ever so slightly over it. Getting to this point without his heart combusting was a victory that he celebrated in his head, so much so that he only regarded her timid frown with passing concern.

At least, for a few seconds.

His smile evaporated when the depths of his sin slapped him across the face—to see someone as strong and resolute as Lori so browbeaten and jittery with just his up-close gaze shamed him deeply.

Hopefully, he had the words to change that.

"Uh...hey, Lori."

"H-hi, Lincoln."

The passing lull of silence was both a blessing and a curse—it made the fact of Lori's unwillingness to even  _try_  to reconnect with her brother painfully apparent, but it offered Lincoln the reins to ease the conversation where he needed it to go.

And he wasn't about to waste it, not even as he felt the mighty jaws of trepidation try to silence his tongue.

"Look, I just..." He reached forward and hugged her. "...I-I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry for everything I did to you."

He couldn't stop the words from tumbling out, not even as he felt his eyes stinging with tears and not even as Lori looked down on him with bewilderment in her widened eyes.

"I shouldn't have treated you like dirt because you messed up. I was so wrong to ignore you. I was so wrong to  _hate_  you. You've never done anything like that to me, and yet I acted as if you deserved it. You've been the...th-the..."

He couldn't contain himself—hot tears streaked down his face and dripped into Lori's garbs. "I-I'm so sorry th-that I made you feel so a-awful!"

There was so much more he wanted to say—like how having her away from home tore out a piece of his heart and how —but his choked sobs prevented them. It was fine by him, though. His tears could be all he needed to convey the words that failed him. Perhaps, she would find solace in the fact that he was honestly going out of his way to show her that she hadn't lost him, after all. It might be a long shot, but he'd bank his hopes on—

"You're wrong."

The flow of his tears ebbed, but the shock of Lori's brash statement opened up Lincoln's throat.

He sniffled and wiped his nose with his sleeve. "What?"

He asked in disbelief at what he heard and what he  _saw—_ not even his watery eyes could stop him from seeing just how stone-faced and lifeless Lori looked. Her eyes, brimmed with blank apathy, froze him to the core.

She continued with drab, muted tone as she gazed into her lap. "You don't have to apologize for anything.  _I_  screwed up, Lincoln. Not you. I deprived you of a good friend, I pushed you down, I acted smug when it looked like you go the short end of the stick when you had to stay home..."

Lincoln winced when a spike of doleful color slipped into her voice. "I even wrecked Vanzilla. Dad was passing it down to you, and I handled it irresponsibly. And he may be getting it fixed, but it doesn't change the fact that I ruined our family vacation."

She was shaking down, and Lincoln held onto her tighter to keep it at bay. The effort, unfortunately, proved to be in vain.

"You were right when you told me that I should've left the house that night. In fact, I should've left and never came back. Maybe then, none of you would have to suffer like this."

A breath hitched in Lincoln's throat as his heart crashed violently in his chest. He was too startled by her proclamation, spoken with such somber intensity, that he couldn't even begin to believe that the depths of her sadness had anything to do with him. He knew he messed up, but this badly? No...no, it couldn't be his fault.

But his fault or not, the poisonous weeds that had taken root in her head had to be hacked away.  _Now_.

"Lori, I−"

His phone buzzed in his pocket, eliciting an impatient groan from him. He pulled it out, looked at the screen, and sighed. Mom had sent him a text.

" _Our ride's here. We need to go, Lincoln."_

But he didn't want to leave now. He wanted to hold Lori close to her and tell her that she meant the world to him. He wanted to smother her with hugs and kisses until she felt better. He wanted her to hold him in her arms and let him know that she took his words and tears to heart and that he was forgiven for being such a nasty beast.

But that would have to wait for tomorrow. It wouldn't be fair to make things for everyone else difficult. Still, that didn't mean that he had to leave her just  _yet_.

Stuffing his phone away, he leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. "Lori, everyone loves you and misses you. There's  _way_  more to you than your mistakes, and it's because you're one of the best sisters anyone could ever have. Never forget that."

When he forced himself to move away, he couldn't help the sickening feeling that his words had fallen on deaf ears.

God, he hoped not.


	8. Chapter 8

Lori had lost her sense of time in the darkness of the recovery room. The room's clock was hidden in unlit ambiance and neither the faint glow of her surrounding medical equipment nor the faltering gleam of moonlight weakly blending into the shadows through the window could aid her.

The most trustworthy thing she could rely on was the knowledge that she had been up for hours now, a plight that was par for her familiar and equally as wretched course.

Sleepless nights came as easy as breathing for Lori. Her troubled mind was more than enough to deprive her of the peace that came from a good night's rest, but Lincoln had done more than enough to help her insomnia—her first family visit from days ago, namely her brother's actions, had given her plenty to contend with, including the fresh, boiling springs of guilt that bubbled over to the point of submerging her under debilitating fret.

Everything that Lincoln had done before approaching her by himself was, as far as she was concerned, an honest reflection of his true feelings. Everyone _else_ may have been fooled by his phony smile, but his deception was as transparent as stainless glass. It was easy to perceive the truth when she had to play that role herself, always keeping up appearances besides a few, rare exceptions.

And Lincoln was, indeed, an exception. Why _wouldn't_ he be? There was no point in helping Dad keep everyone in the dark when one of the few people who truly knew her was eyeing her from a distance with cold, unflinching judgment in his glare—it was a displeasure that she had rightfully earned for tainting his life and depriving him of joy.

It would've been so easy for him to throw away his burden of his feigned ease and destroy her with his contempt. She guessed that was why he was keeping his distance while everyone else was ravishing her with love and attention—suppressing his true intent while trying to blend in must've tasted like cold, bitter poison slithering down his gullet.

When her parents and sisters left, he shed away his mask of comfort for genuine emotion. But his softened eyes and timid expression—from the way he was jittery limbs shook to his bottom lip clamped by teeth—spoke of apprehension, not anger. From there, she felt even _worse_. It was one thing for Lincoln to hate her, but to fear her presence? To be deprived of his peace of mind by being within twenty feet of her? That was _truly_ unforgivable.

So why, when he finally had words to spare, did he spend them on...apologizing? Why, when he could've complimented his fury with fiery eyes, were they full to the brim with bitter tears? Was he coerced, possibly by Mom and Dad, into throwing away his conviction just to spare her feelings? Was she so pathetic-looking that he couldn't help but pity her?

Rather than ponder the mystery, she had been far too interested into shutting him up and trying to force those regretful words back down his throat by reminding him that she was owed nothing but his brutal honesty. If anything, _he_ was the one that deserved happiness, and that reality always centered around one possibility.

' _If you weren't around, they'd be better off.'_

But rather than submit to her reasoning, she was reminded of the depth of her cruelty when he remained firm in his plea for her sense of self-worth, despite that privilege being something that she abused for her own benefit. It made her shiver when he hugged her, but only because a sensation akin to slimy egg yolk trickled sickly down her back when he tried to give her comfort despite her unworthiness.

And thankfully, after he had abruptly left her, that was the last of that.

She received other visits from her family, but it seemed as if her resistance to Lincoln's forgiveness had shooed him away, for he simply joined in the crowd of siblings that surrounded her with smiles and short accounts of what they were up to while she was away—it gave her a sliver of peace to pick up on how he was no longer trying to stand out with acts of folly.

But more than anything, to hear about how stable everything was without her was enough justification for her beliefs. Sure, they gave passing mentions about how they missed her, but that wasn't the same thing as _needing_ her. Leni was probably making sure the younger ones were well taken care of in her stead.

' _Bullshit. You know that's not true.'_

Lori shook her head, her crippling drowsiness hardly flinching. No, that implied that _she_ had been putting everyone else's needs first the whole time, and Leni was simply continuing the trend in her absence. It was more fair to say that she was starting something beautiful, something that her siblings were denied all along because of her greed.

All of those woes, however, tortured her with less fervor than the pressing matter of what tomorrow had in store for her. When she had bared her wounded soul to her father, she soon realized that she was ultimately leaving her fate in his hands by compelling him to take action. That action was spelled out to her, with no room for negotiation, by her mother earlier in the day. She'd be released from the hospital today, and her next course of action was decided for her.

She was going to see a doctor, and Leni would be coming with her.

* * *

_"What?"_

_Lori double-checked the look on her mother's face to be sure that she wasn't pulling her leg with a sick joke. It only took a few seconds of looking at her body language—the defiant crossing of her arms, her firm posture, and the lack of twitching in her tightened lips (as if she was holding back a laugh)—to realize that she wasn't kidding._

_Unfortunately, Mom's words were unquestionable. Nothing could've possibly drowned her out from hearing anything else._

" _You heard me, Lori. You need to see a GP about your..." Lori felt her heart flutter nervously when Mom had to pause and take a deep breath, despite knowing where she was going. "...well, the possibility of you having depression. Your father told me everything you said to him on Tuesday, and we both think that it's best that we get your mental health evaluated by a professional."_

_And there it was again. Her proposal was just another version of what Dad tried to get her into the day after Carol had babysat her younger siblings. The only difference was that there was a culprit at the epicenter of all the drama—still, that didn't mean that her "depression", if she even had it, was worth spending money and time on._

" _It's okay, Mom," Lori said, shaking her head and managing to force a sliver of a grin on her face. "Really, i-it's fine. You don't have to waste your time with me."_

_The words were a waste as soon as she saw sadness drown out her mother's defiant stance, her face softening and her bright eyes shimmering instantly. Hell, knowing Mom, she didn't even need that to know they were a waste._

_Sure enough, Mom gently placed her hand on her cast and said, with gentle firmness in her voice, "Lori, none of the love and attention your father and I have spent on you has ever been a waste. Caring for you and your siblings has been a blessing that I wouldn't give away for anything. And whether you believe it or not, you've been a blessing to your siblings. All of them want you back as soon as you can."_

_Mom chuckled as she looked up, as if she was reminiscing. "You should've seen the look on their faces when your father told them that you'd be released tomorrow—I can't remember the last time that Lucy had a smile that big on her face."_

_Lori couldn't remember the time where Lucy had a big smile on her face, either:-at least, to the degree that Mom seemed to be describing. Or rather, she couldn't remember such a smile that was inspired because of her. It only made sense that she could show such joy when she was no longer around to muddy up the perfect family picture._

" _Look," Mom continued, "I get that you're a little bit nervous about your upcoming appointment, but you have to understand that this is for your own good. Plus, it doesn't have to be as difficult as you think. That's why, to make things easy, I've thought about bringing Leni along for moral support. I'm sure she'll want to be there for you."_

_For a split second, Lori couldn't keep her eyelids from flickering up a small fraction from shock._

" _Lori?"_

_The lack of an immediate reply must've been responsible for triggering her concern. To keep her at bay, Lori looked to her and asked, as nonchalantly as possible, "Yes?"_

" _Get some rest, okay?" Mom said, reaching forward to kiss Lori on the forehead. "You have an important day tomorrow."_

…

_..._

" _Okay, Mom."_

* * *

Even now, hours later, Lori couldn't wrap her head around what dealing with her possible bout of depression was going to solve. She supposed she could blame that on her insomnia and perpetual lethargy, but that would only deal with the physical side of things.

But everything else? The factors that _truly_ mattered in the grand scheme of things? _Those_ factors would remain unchanged. Whether she could have look herself in the mirror without cringing or not, she had years of tragedies that she'd never be able to take back. Whether she could make it through a day of school without feeling herself come apart or not, she was still nothing more than a disappointment compared to her siblings.

She was still a lost cause, whether or not she could smile without forcing herself into it—and in just a couple of hours, Leni, the one who always had the most respect for her out of any of her siblings, would be there to realize that, too.

If she hadn't _already_ made the deduction by herself.

* * *

Three things greeted Lori when Mom came by to pick her up from Royal Woods General.

Her first observation was the warmth of the early Sunday afternoon. There was a crisp breeze of wind light enough to slightly tousle her hair, but not strong enough to keep the Sun's radiance from heating her skin without baking her to a crisp. Embracing the weather for the first time in nearly a week was hardly a pleasure, though—lately, she was hard pressed to find much of _anything_ a pleasure.

The second thing was the ride in which Mom arrived in when she got to the hospital. A few days ago, Dad had mentioned that he was able to rent a thirteen-passenger minivan. After about a few minutes of walking through the RWG's front parking lot, they made it to the rental. Compared to Vanzilla, the car was pretty modest in size—the blue finish had way more luster and sheen than that of Vanzilla's, though.

Lori's third discovery was...something that she caught on as soon as she opened the passenger side of the car and looked back once she got in her seat. It didn't phase her when Mom had come to get her by herself because she assumed that Leni was waiting for them in one of the back seats.

But, lo and behold, there was no Leni to be found.

"Where's Leni?" Lori asked as she carefully buckled in her seat belt with her good arm, careful to mind her sling-sheltered left forearm.

Mom answered her when she entered on the driver's side, looking ahead with a downcast look. "Well… don't take this the wrong way, but, uh, she didn't want to come."

Lori's brow furrowed as her teeth clenched. Her eyes swelled up, watered, and burned—it felt as if tiny wasp stingers were fit to tear through the cornea from the inside.

' _Of course, she didn't want to come. Why would she want to be around yo-'_

"Whatever you're thinking, honey, that's not the way it is," Mom said, her sudden touch on her shoulder and her attention-giving stare snapping Lori out of her thoughts more than her words did. "It's just that she didn't think that she could be of any help. It has nothing to do with how horrible you think you are."

Lori could've pressed the conversation with more questions, but that implied that she was out of the loop. It was obvious why Leni didn't want to come. Going with her meant that Leni would have to be in the know about what she was going through, and _that_ probably meant that her parents passed on her words that she had said to Dad onto her sister. From there, Leni made the only call that made sense by keeping her distance from a hopeless case like her—unlike Mom and Dad, she wasn't strong-armed by the law into caring for her and protecting her.

With that freedom, Leni would do what the others would do once they were privy to their eldest sister's misdeeds and inadequacy—when they weren't busy mocking her for pathetically holding onto her "birthright", they'd denounce her for being such a miserable failure.

So Lori sat in silence, saying nothing more as Mom drove away from the place that she didn't need to be in the first place—had those shards of glass from Vanzilla been kinder to her family, they would've done everyone justice as soon as they burst asunder from the car crash and slit her throat wide open.

* * *

Dr. Pennington's office was, of course, as immaculate as it had always been.

A round, wooden coffee table—resting stacks of magazines, pens, and brochures on top—was centered in the middle of the waiting room, surrounded by two rows of thickly padded black vinyl chairs on either side. A flat screen television—hanging overhead the elegant, glass-top receptionist's desk—looped a myriad of local commercials with bright colors and an even brighter voice-over accompanying each ad. Impressionist paintings of nature—trees, flowers, and grassy hills—decorated the sandy beige walls.

Rita was grateful that she was the only one occupying the waiting room, besides the female, middle-aged receptionist that was too busy minding her work at her station to bother her. It may have been presumptuous to think that anyone would want to pry into her business to begin with, especially patients with their _own_ crosses to bear, but she didn't need the risk of the contrary looming around her—she wanted her undivided attention on Lori, not on well-intended concerns from those who saw the worried look on her face.

She had routinely checked her watch, more out of a nervous tic than measured practicality, and doing so the last time (less than thirty seconds ago) told her that she had been waiting just a little over an hour. Her right foot tapped against the floor, drowning out the ticking of the clock above her head.

Rita blew out a breath she had been keeping in her chest, slighting alleviating her anxiousness. Besides Lori's general well-being, there was the subject of confidentiality to fret about. Barring the horrid outcome of Lori posing a danger to herself, there was nothing Dr. Pennington could do if her daughter wanted to shut her out. That, of course, would mean that everything wasn't _as_ bad as she thought they were, but there was no comfort in being left out of the loop for even the _tiniest_ bit of Lori's woes.

She looked at her watch again, but quickly drew away from it to look up—the faint sound of a closing door, followed by the distant sound of footsteps seized her attention. Sure enough, around that corner came Lori, followed closely behind by Dr. Pennington. She was a tall, fair-skinned woman with her pale blonde hair tied in a ponytail—the traces of gray strands and crow's feet betrayed her age, possibly putting the woman in her late forties. The authoritative air around her, along with the thin line that formed her indifferent frown, told of bad news yet to be delivered.

In any case, without Dr. Pennington's invitation, Rita sprung from her seat and rushed over. She stretched her arms out for a hug, but quickly drew her arms back to the side at the last minute, minding her cast. She settled for putting a hand on Lori's head while she gave her attention to the doctor.

"Is everything okay with Lori, doctor?" Rita asked, glancing down at Lori for a split second.

Rita felt her chest tighten when Dr. Pennington didn't smile.

"Well," the doctor began, "from what I was able to evaluate, there was nothing that I was required to tell you if Lori felt that she didn't want you to know anything. In other words, not only is Lori okay with you having full disclosure with what we discussed, but I'm confident that her issues don't have... _life-threatening_ concerns."

Instinctively, Rita brought Lori a little closer—just _hearing_ the term "life-threatening" made her breath catch.

"From the blood test we took—which was done to rule out any specific causes of her symptoms—followed by the screening of her mental health with the PHQ-9, the BDI, and the HAM-D, I was able to diagnose Lori with moderate depression, though it's close to teetering into severe territory from the test results and the brief one-on-one conversation we had. From what she told me, she'd been dealing with it for about a month now."

The official diagnosis made her sigh in bitter acceptance rather than total despair—she could only hope for the least awful but plausible outcome, and moderate depression was close enough.

"I have copies of the diagnostic surveys she took. Lori's willing to let both you and her father have a look at them. I recommend that you take them to a therapist, if Lori wants to go through with such a visit. It'd be a great aid for them and whatever treatment plan they come up with."

Before she knew it, the doctor wrote up a prescription and held it out to Rita.

"In addition, I'm giving her Prozac to take for her symptoms," she said as Rita used her other hand to grab it. "Ten milligrams for a week, followed by an additional ten milligrams after that. Start having her take her doses in the morning, preferably right after she wakes up. If you feel as though the medication isn't having any effect after a few weeks, make sure to contact me before you consider changing her dosage."

Rita's eyes were too busy being glued to the prescription to see Dr. Pennington smile at her, though she could almost hear it in her voice when she addressed her.

"Try not to worry too much, Rita. We'll do everything we can to help your daughter."

Rita tried to smile herself, but she couldn't. She was almost in a trance, only able to hear the doctor's words as she re-read "10 mg" over and over again. Finally, she managed to find her voice after ten seconds, though her reply was stiff, almost callous to the generosity she and Lori were being treated to.

"Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you, doctor."

From there, she waited for Dr. Pennington to come back with the test results. In the back of her mind, she wondered what she was going to do once she and Lynn had to tell the others.

* * *

The ride home was smooth sailing through the quiet lanes of her neighborhood, but Lori couldn't have cared less.

It was finished. She had spilled her guts—making sure not to spare on detail—but only because she felt so drained, too weak to make much resistance. Besides, there was no merit in keeping her mouth shut. Sooner or later, everyone would know about who she truly was and if her parents were going to blow money and love on a hopeless cause like her, it was better to just lay out all her cards on the table and have them realize how pointless it was to worry about her.

"Lori?"

Lori perked up, her half-open eyes blinking rapidly as she groaned, "Hmm?"

"Thank you for letting me in. I really appreciate you for doing that."

Rather than answer, Lori felt sleepiness gently lulling her back into the abyss. For whatever reason, visiting Dr. Pennington made her exhausted, more tired than she had felt in a while. She supposed it didn't help that she hadn't gotten much sleep before waking up at five in the morning, but that couldn't make her disregard how surprisingly...empty her head felt.

"When we get home," Mom continued, "I need you to get some rest, alright? You look like you haven't slept well lately."

Whatever it was about her statement made Lori jump in her seat, fully alert. She didn't deserve rest, not until her penance was paid for. After all, it was the weekend, which meant that she was _still_ in the doghouse.

"But what about my chores?" Lori asked.

Mom shook her head and scoffed. "Forget about them. You're no longer grounded. You've already been through enough as it is. Just get some sleep."

"But, Mom, I−"

"Please, Lori. Just... _please_ get some rest."

It made Lori's gut twist in knots when she realized that she was getting off easy...again. First with Dad, then with Lincoln, and now this. And then, it was like her head was being squeezed by a vice all over again, the throbbing pain keeping her tiredness at bay like always.

All it did was make Lori's heart ache to know that it'd be nigh impossible to keep her word to her mother now.

* * *

Lincoln laid in bed, having a fourth look at the message that Mom had sent out in a group text about five minutes ago.

" _Lori and I are coming home very soon, probably in a few minutes. I know you're all very excited to see your sister again, but she needs her rest. That's why I want all of you to remain in your rooms until Lori's in bed. None of you are to disturb her while she's recovering. In the meantime, Leni, I want you to move out of your room and stay with someone else."_

Lincoln didn't need a text message from Mom to stay away from Lori. He had, more or less, done that of his own accord ever since Tuesday (or at least, he wasn't about to face her one-on-one). Even now, the words that Lori left him before he left the hospital haunted him. The magnitude of her despair was horrifying enough as it was, but what made it worse was that a week ago...he most likely wouldn't have been felt dissatisfied to hear her have such a low opinion about herself.

He was happy that when they visited Lori after the first occasion, she seemed...way better than before. He chalked it up to him keeping her distance, even if he wasn't really trying to make her feel better as a result—in all honesty, he just didn't have any more words to give after it looked like the worst of her guilt was over. Still, she probably appreciated not having one of the sources of her anguish confronting her without anyone else around that _wasn't_ guilty of scorning her.

He had smiled while he was with her, but only for as long as he could allow himself to do so. There was still guilt in what he had done to make her feel so horrible, meaning that his bright grin was somewhat forced. There was some relief in the fact that Lori didn't outright resent him, but what was that supposed to mean in terms of a satisfying resolution to everything between them? What could be possibly say or do to make everything back to the way it was before? One paltry apology wasn't going to be enough, especially when her conscience-shredding words tormented him nearly every night before he went to sleep—they'd be nothing but a distant, harmless memory if he could make _true_ amends.

Suddenly, light rapping knocked against his door, followed by the sound of his father's voice.

"Lincoln? I need you out here, buddy."

Lincoln stuffed his phone in his pocket and scrambled out of bed and made his way towards the door. He flung it open and answered, before looking at Dad in the eye, "Yeah, Dad? What's up?"

Dad jabbed his thumb over his shoulder towards the staircase. "Look, I need you to go to the living room. Lana, Lisa, Lucy, and Lola will be joining you."

Lincoln raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

Dad's brow furrowed. "I'll explain later. Just do as I say, and be quick about it."

Lincoln felt a breadth of fear from Dad's solemn face and firm tone, not used to seeing him use such stern authority. Nodding, he slipped past Dad and made a beeline for the stairs.

* * *

Soon, the living room couch became fully occupied. Lola was the first to join Lincoln, followed by Lisa, Lana, and Lucy. There was no time for speculation behind Dad's actions, at least not out loud—Dad's swift arrival, along with the somberness that wafted off of him like a bad stench, left the children speechless.

Lincoln nearly cringed when his father's face finally came into view—if his stoniness from a few minutes ago was daunting, then the dejected look on his face was even more unsettling. A band of tension wrapped around his chest like a tight rubber band, even as he could feel Lana and Lola pressing into him on either side—a quick glance on both their faces spoke of apprehension, perhaps more than what he had brimming under the surface.

"Your mother's speaking with your other siblings in Luna and Luan's bedroom," Dad said. " _I'm_ in charge of telling you the news."

"Pertaining to what, exactly?" Lisa asked with folded arms, the impatience in her tone more than Lincoln would've dared to use.

"That's what I'd like to know, too," Lucy replied from her perch on one of the couch's arms.

"Are we in trouble?" Lola asked. The timidness in her expression quickly drained out when she pointed to Lana, her gesture assertive and self-assured. "Because if we are, it was totally Lana's fault."

Lana's eyes widened and her lips formed a tight snarl as her head quickly swiveled over to Lola. "What?! Hey, I didn't do anything!"

Lola snorted. "Of _course_ , you did. Why _else_ would we be down here?"

Redness consumed Lana's face as her nostrils flared. "I already told you I didn't do anything! You better take that back!"

"Sorry," Lola said, capping off her dismissive remark with a sweeping wave of her hand, "I don't speak to troublemakers."

" _ **Enough**_!"

The booming voice of their father cracked like a gun shot, igniting a burning flash of terror into Lincoln's heart—by the way the twins immediately shrunk into their seats, the effect spurred them into respect the most.

"This isn't the time for acting up. This is _very_ important, and any further monkey business _will_ be punished." The pointed look on Dad's face swept over to the others, ensuring that they all got a good look. "That goes for everyone. Am I clear?"

No longer frozen up, Lincoln and his younger sisters nodded.

"Good. Now then, as I said before, your mother's speaking with your older sisters while I'm speaking with all of you." He took a moment to wipe at his eyes with his sleeve. "It's about Lori. She came home a few minutes ago, and she's trying to get some rest. Basically, this is about good news and...bad news. _Very_ bad news."

Lincoln nearly swallowed his tongue as he gulped. A budding chill spiked through his spine and made his legs shake. Whatever this news was, he hoped that the "very bad" part of it didn't spell out an unshakable dilemma.

"The good news is that even though she's in a cast, the damage to her forearm won't be permanent. In about about a month or so, she'll be ready for physical therapy, and the screws in her arms will be ready to come out. As far as her arm goes, there's a good chance it'll be as good as new before we all know."

Dad took another second to pause and rub at his eyes, this time with his hand. Lincoln noted that before he did, there was shimmering wetness that nearly pooled of his eyes and streaked down his face—it only made his gut clench.

"Which takes me to the very bad news. Right now, Lori's dealing with something much worse than a broken arm. _Much_ worse. After Lori left the hospital, your mother took her to see our family doctor about her...mental health. You see, Rita and I have had our concerns about her ever since the car accident, especially after I saw her the day after. Dr. Pennington told us that Lori's been having depression for a month or so. It's close to being severe."

It was if a big, hot branding iron smacked Lincoln across the face, less with the horror behind the news and more with how easily he allowed himself to believe that besides a little self-deprecation, Lori was just fine.

And how did he arrive at such an optimistic outlook? Because _he_ wanted it? Because _he_ wanted the blood of an even worse situation off his hands to ease his conscience? He only had a smattering of understanding about what "depression" was, but the weight of Lori's troubles still grieved him to the point of his throat choking up and his fingers curling into fidgety fists.

He was too absorbed in his own misery to notice Lisa, who scrambled off the couch with her back turned to everyone. She was almost at the bottom step of the staircase until she paused the moment Dad called out to her.

"Lisa? Where are you going? I need you to−"

"Forgive me, father," Lisa interrupted, a noticeable quiver in her voice, "but I...I need some time alone to process this information. I'll be in my room if you need me."

Lincoln half-expected Dad to put his foot down and call her back over, but he allowed her to leave on her own terms. Meanwhile, Lola, Lana and Lucy (to a seemingly lesser extent) seemed...almost unfazed.

"Wait, what's...depression?" Lola asked with a shrug, her face scrunched up in confusion.

"It can mean different things for different people, Lola, but in Lori's case, it means that she's been feeling miserable almost every day lately. For most people, when they get sad, they can get over it normally. But for depressed people like your sister, the sadness eats them up almost all the time. It's not something that anyone can just brush aside easily."

"But why?" Lana asked.

"She doesn't think that she's worth any of our love," Dad continued. "Lori's been putting a lot of unhealthy, unnecessary guilt on herself for everything that's been happening around here lately, like the car crash, the canceled family vacation, and the babysitting incident with Carol. She feels responsible for making your lives worse instead of better."

At the mention of Lori's guilt, Lincoln squirmed and squeezed his eyes shut—air rushed into his lungs as he sharply inhaled through his nose.

"And on top of that, she feels as though she's not as special as the rest of you. That's why she loved being in charge so much—it was the only thing she felt that she had to stand out from everyone else."

"But she was so happy every time we saw her," Lucy said. "How can someone with depression smile like _that_?"

Dad shook his head and sighed. "Sometimes, when we care about the people we love, we try to hide our pain from them so they don't have to worry. I think that's what Lori wanted to do for as long as she could, until she felt like she didn't have a choice. The most important thing we can do for her is to be patient. Depression is a serious problem that you can't beat overnight. Just be there for her as much as you can. Go out of your way to remind her how special she is, and how she doesn't deserve to feel like dirt just because she made some mistakes. Can I trust you all to do that?"

Whether Dad knew it or not, his last words spoke directly to Lincoln. He didn't answer with a nod or a "Yes, Dad," like the others, but he still felt...empowered, resolute to do whatever he could to help Lori.

He wouldn't deny that there was selfishness on his end—in the form of desiring for his relationship with Lori to truly be restored—but he also wouldn't oppose the motivation it'd give him to do whatever he needed to do. There was a jagged, rusty stake jammed through Lori's heart with his name on it—that much was certain—but his guilt would only make him think about how miserable _he_ felt.

From now on, his focus would only be on Lori as long as it could.

* * *

There was only so much Rita could do to deliver the news in the most delicate way she could, but the damage was done as soon as she was finished. She would've joined Luan as she buried her face in Luna's chest for comfort or looked pensively through the window like Lynn as she sat on the edge of Luan's bed, but she needed to be strong.

Especially for what was in front of her now.

Her meeting with her oldest children (save Lori) had ended a few minutes ago, but she needed to speak with Leni in private, hence why she called her out and had her wait for her by Lincoln's room. When she had finally joined Leni, she was met with more of the same, more of what she had seen since yesterday—a downcast expression with the ghastly look of her eyes shifting down to the floor.

It was the complete opposite of the faces she wore when she had been in front of Lori during their family visits, but Rita supposed that she could only blame herself for the burden that she had put on Leni's shoulders when she asked for her help.

Still, that didn't explain _why_ it was a burden in the first place.

"Leni, I need you to be honest with me," Rita said. "Why didn't you want to go with your sister today? When I told you that she might be hurt even worse than she looked, why didn't you feel like coming along?"

Leni's eyes hardly even flinched up in her direction.

"Look, I know you didn't want to...say anything after I asked you the first time, but you heard what I told you all, right? Everyone has to do there part to give Lori the support that she needs. If there's something about her that makes you feel uncomfortable, you need to−"

Rita held her tongue when Leni shook her head and spoke again when she was done.

"Then what _is_ it?"

When silence met her demand, Rita had to advise herself against asking Leni again with more sternness…

...especially now that she could hear Leni sniffling. Before she knew it, her daughter was staring back at her, tears slipping down her cheeks like raindrops.

"It's me, okay?" she croaked as she pointed to herself. " _I'm_ the problem."

Rita felt her heart crush into fine powder—as if a giant mallet slammed down on it with am earth-splitting, deafening crash—as her stomach turned.

"I-I let her g-get hurt, even w-when I..." Leni cleared her throat, wiping away the choking hold her sadness had on her voice. "...even when I knew something was wrong. If I was better, if I was like...like Lori, I wouldn't have allowed her to be in so much pain. So, like, what good am _I_ gonna do? If I couldn't be there for her when she needed me before, what am I supposed to do _now_?"

Before she knew it, Rita had Leni in a hug, her chin capping off the crown of her head as it nestled in her hair. Even if she couldn't look Leni in the eyes, she at least believed that she had the right words to spare for someone who deserved to feel the _least_ amount of guilt in anyone of this.

"Leni, if anyone should feel like a failure for letting Lori suffer for so long, it's your father and me," Rita said sadly. "You ran to us for help, and we both ignored you—and we're both truly sorry for that. But even still, the both of us are doing whatever we can to make sure she beats her depression. So then, how much more can the first person to actually notice a problem do? How much more can one of Lori's closest friends do?"

The trickles of tears didn't stop, but Rita felt comfort in the fact that when Leni squirmed her face out of her mother's bosom to look up at her there seemed to be...some sort of wavering resolution shimmering with her sparkling tears.

"You're better than you think you are, Leni," Rita continued. "That's why I want to leave you in charge of a big responsibility. Lori's going to be taking some medication to help with her symptoms. I want you to make sure that she takes one tablet every morning after she wakes up, starting tomorrow. She'll need to take more eventually, but she only needs one tablet for now. If you need any help, then your father and I can always step in if you need it. But I figured that you can handle it. Can you do that for me? For Lori?"

She could feel herself tense up from uncertainty when Leni pulled herself out her grasp. The feeling only grew when Leni turned around, facing Lincoln's door as her shoulders slumped forward and her head bowed as she let out a long sigh. She stayed that way for a few more seconds, then looked back at Rita over her shoulder. All of Rita's fears dissolved into the air when her daughter's look of determination addressed her, along with a smile that tugged at the corner of her lips.

"Yes," Leni replied, blinking back the last of her tears into her reddened eyes. "Yes, I can."


	9. Chapter 9

Rita didn't speak her mind on the unsettling thoughts that reality had laid across her back to carry as a burden, but that didn't keep her from reflecting on how everything had changed so dramatically in a week's time.

She knew that she had somewhere to be soon, but the revelation as momentous as the one that troubled her mind floored her—now, she was chained to the edge of her bed, mindlessly shifting her hands across her face as she tried her best to bury her mournful expression in her palms.

No matter how many deep, calming breaths she violently sucked through her mouth, the remaining vacancy in her head slowly but surely succumbed to distant, innocent memories that taunted her with such a bold contrast to the hell that her family was going through.

But a paltry seven days ago, there was nothing to look forward to except for an extended period of vacation—fun, relaxation, and bonding that her husband and children hadn't done in a while. The most challenging part of it all was just trying to make everyone's accommodations accounted for before the big day.

And at the end of the day, even _if_ happiness and anticipation were par for the course, that could've only been a possibility because of everyone's ignorance to Lori's suffering. The sacrifice of such ignorance was worth knowing the true state of affairs—it demanded everyone's attention and the pursuit of what it would take to lead her daughter to recovery.

Soon, the only audience to her troubled display suddenly slid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze.

"Rita?" Lynn Sr. asked, almost as softly as his gesture. "You know, you don't have to pick up Lori's prescription if you don't want to. You can just stay here and-"

Rita shook her head reflexively. She only wondered where the sudden urge to do so came from but it became obvious a second later. It was that brief conversation with Leni that not only opened her eyes to the guilt she had had a hand in fostering with her inaction to her concerns, but to how downright crippling it was to feel helpless.

It was why she felt indebted to Leni by giving her the responsibility of taking charge of Lori's medication. Driving to the pharmacy to get it was small potatoes compared to such a proactive duty, but Rita knew that she would've vastly preferred doing that over laying in bed and crying.

To give her husband more assurance in her decision, Rita looked up at him. She wouldn't lie to him with smile, but she could at least convey her genuine need to see her task through.

"No. I'll go. It's fine," Rita replied. "Just promise me that you'll look into hiring a therapist for Lori while I'm gone. We can discuss the matter further once I come back and give the Prozac to Leni."

His furrowed brow and frown didn't dissipate by much, but at least it told Rita that he was willing to let her go.

"Well, alright," Lynn Sr. said. "I'll do as much digging as I can. Just remember what you told me all those days ago—for Lori's sake, we can't fall apart. If that means that you have to take a moment to unwind for a bit, then that shouldn't be off the table."

Rita stood up and gave her husband a kiss on the cheek before she waved goodbye and said, just before stepping out of the bedroom, "Thank you. If you need anything from me, just call and I'll see what I can do."

Admittedly, she wasn't counting on anything amiss going on in her short absence, but if the past week had taught her anything, it was that she couldn't afford to keep her ear off the ground for one second.

She'd be damned if she made that mistake again.

* * *

It took about two hours of solitude in his bedroom, lounging in bed while restlessly shifting into different positions, for Lincoln to start questioning his reputation.

Granted, his title as "The Man with the Plan" was self-professed, but it wasn't a moniker that was challenged all that often by either a skeptic of his quick wits and clever scheming or any sort of roadblock that would prevent him from formulating a plan in the first place.

To Lincoln's shame, he was contending with the latter, and no amount of self-reprimanding or pep talk could create a spark of inspiration to ignite and gracefully lead him into mentally mapping out the foolproof stages of what was supposed to be the strategy that would get him what he wanted.

And that ingenuity usually came about because of how the results would be of _his_ benefit—it seemed as if Lori's well-being wasn't enough to stimulate that process.

' _And after everything I said to her, too,'_ Lincoln thought, his back against a wall both literally and figuratively. _'What's...what's wrong with me?'_

It didn't matter if the nature of depression wasn't as familiar as the back of his hand and he was trying to get to the heart of a dilemma that was beyond his wisdom—Lori, much like any of his sisters, were not only worth the effort but the guarantee of deliverance. Yet, all he had to show for was failure and the knowledge that he wasn't any closer to cracking this vexing puzzle.

What were hugs and kisses supposed to do someone who couldn't stand the sight of her reflection? How could an "I love you" be anything other than insultingly glib in the mind of someone who scorned their very existence? Dad had already implied that anything that they would do wouldn't foster any substantial results as soon as they would want them. He already experienced that harsh truth firsthand when he and Lori were alone at the hospital.

A frustrated groan tore into Lincoln's throat as he submitted to his ineptitude, at least for the moment. He felt pathetic for throwing in the towel, but he knew he was better for Lori if he wasn't too down on himself to pay her troubles any mind.

In the meantime, he would attend a secondary objective. Honestly, he didn't think he'd get around to it until much later—still, his curiosity couldn't help but have him dwell on Lisa's exit from a few hours ago. She didn't seem distraught enough to make him fret at the time, but that didn't mean that he couldn't be wrong.

A quick visit to Lisa's room, Lincoln thought, would answer the questions that wouldn't leave him alone without a resolution:

' _Are you okay, Lisa? And whether you are or you aren't, just what are you up to?'_

* * *

Lincoln was tipped off to the nature of Lisa's activities from the lack of thick, green fog seeping underneath her bedroom door and the absence of rapping from the other side–it seemed as if she _wasn't_ in a rush to get a lyrical fix from her favorite west coast artists or to create questionable chemical mixtures for heaven knows what reason.

His familiarity with her pastimes told him that she was most likely reading and judging from how he didn't receive an immediate response once he knocked on her door, she was deeply rooted in her studies.

Another session of knocks finally did the trick in beckoning her attention.

"I'll be just a minute, Lincoln," Lisa replied with about half of her outdoor voice.

Her answer only confused Lincoln for a second before he realized who he was dealing with.

' _Huh. She must have her surveillance cameras on,'_ he thought.

Knowing Lisa, she would've either exploited the idiom to its absolute limits and had him wait for her for literally an entire minute or take even longer than that. Unfortunately, unless she was dealing with Mom or Dad, it was always one or the other.

It was an inconsideration that Lincoln had learned to take in stride, but that was usually when he wasn't fretting about her well-being by expecting her to be holding in at least _some_ degree of sadness.

 _If_ reading was on her brain, Lincoln could only hope that her indulgence was a matter of temporarily coping with the hand that their oldest sister was dealt and not a means to avoid Lori's sad reality any chance she could get. Something told him that Lori seeing even one of her siblings fall away in seclusion would only make her feel worse.

' _She'd probably just think it was her fault.'_

He didn't want to even begin to imagine what that would look like, given what he was supposed to be doing here—if Lisa needed a shoulder to cry on, he couldn't afford to show any weakness that his spiraling emotions would scar across his face with cropping tears and shivering frowns.

At last, the door opened. The crack was wide enough for Lisa to poke her head through. The sight of his sister gave him pause, though he still felt relief. His unwholesome expectations made him believe that Lisa would've looked similar to how Leni appeared the night he came into her bedroom to apologize—a smile betraying sadness and puffy, red eyes. Instead, it was her characteristic brand of stoicism, tarnished only by a few loose strands of her shaggy hair filtering over the rim of one of her glasses lenses.

"Hey, Lisa," Lincoln said. "You mind if I come in? There's something I need to...you know what? Hold on a second."

He had tried not to make much of a fuss over her slightly disheveled appearance, but he knew better than to think his "big brother" instincts wouldn't kick in at some point. He swiped his thumb across the tip of his tongue and slicked those bothersome little strands of hair back into place. He didn't mind Lisa's grumbling and indignant frown during the process—if anything, it just made her cuter than she needed to be.

Slipping his hands on his hips and showing off a proud smile, Lincoln said, "There we go. That looks _way_ better."

By way of her rolling her eyes, Lisa showed that she couldn't have disagreed more if she tried.

"Was that really necessary?" she asked dryly.

Lincoln's smile only grew wider. "Yes. Yes, it was."

With a sigh and a shake of her head, Lisa pulled the door back further, allowing Lincoln to look past her and at the surprisingly immaculate workspace at her computer desk. No stray test tubes, chemical puddles, or scattered notes were found. Even if the minute that was spent between Lisa telling him to wait for her and answering the door was spent on cleaning up, there was no way she'd be able to amend the usual mess of her room _that_ quickly by herself.

"Be that as it may," Lisa retorted as she turned on her heel and headed towards her computer, "I highly doubt that you came by just to fret about my appearance."

"Yeah, you got me," Lincoln said, following after her once he shut the door behind him. "I just wanted to see if you were okay."

"Ah, I see."

It wasn't until they both approached the desk and Lisa took her seat on herb that Lincoln had more to think about than Lisa's state of mind—her computer screen was locked on the results of a search engine page, hyperlinks to various websites and sources either coded in blue or purple hues. The page was scrolled halfway down, so he couldn't see what she was looking up. However, the repetition of a certain acronym—shared between the hyperlinks—caught his eye.

' _C...B...T?'_ Lincoln thought. _'Just what the heck does that mea-'_

Lisa clearing her throat, clearly an impatient gesture to keep her brother's focus, prevented Lincoln's mind from drifting to where it needn't be for now. He looked down and shot Lisa an apologetic, sheepish smile, but he was cut off from forming an actual pardon when Lisa spoke before he had the chance to do so himself.

"If I had to surmise the origins of your concern," Lisa said, "I'd say you felt as if I was either dangerously susceptible to despondency or already plagued with such emotions immediately after father summoned us to the living room and announced Lori's depression to us. Thus, you felt it necessary to see if I was in the need of your love and encouragement."

Lincoln's eyes, along with his amazement of Lisa's perceptive abilities, widened.

"Uhhh...yeah. That's...that's all true. How'd you know?" he asked.

"Earlier, father checked up on me for those exact same reasons." A small smirk curved along her face. "Like father, like son."

Lincoln couldn't help but smile and chuckle—most of his expression had more to do than appreciating a good joke, though.

"Okay, okay, you got me. Very funny," Lincoln said before professing his hopes. "I guess if you're in the mood to crack jokes, that means you're feeling fine, right?"

And just like that, his heart sunk like a stone through a dark, watery abyss as the levity on Lisa's face evaporated and left a wan, ugly parody of her smile behind.

"If by 'fine', you mean I'm not crippled by overbearing grief that would render me to tears, at least for the moment, then yes," Lisa replied. By now, her grin was completely gone, as if the weight of her oncoming words forced it down into her present frown. "Lori's mental and emotional stability, along with the general well-being of this household, has always made things 'fine'. _Without_ it, however, I can't say that I'm 'fine'. _Nothing_ will be 'fine' until she has made a full recovery."

Before he could even think about doing anything, Lincoln had one of Lisa's hands in his and his steely, determined gaze piercing into her eyes. Her expression couldn't have been more profound— _he_ probably had the same look about him as he paced around his room looking for answers.

But, unlike Lisa, at least he had done enough lately to deserve that burden to bear. Even without anything close to a suitable answer to Lori's happiness, he knew had to assure her.

"We'll get there, somehow," Lincoln said. "I don't care what it takes. We'll do it. _All_ of us."

Lisa sighed. "As much as I don't wish to disparage your optimism, I simply can't hinge my hopes on 'somehow'. Along with checking on me, father asked if I could follow along with everyone else's efforts to invigorate Lori as much as we could. You may find this callous of me to say, but I believe that such measures simply won't cut it. I can't imagine that overly saccharine speech will render much success to someone who believes that they're not worthy of such attention."

It shamed him to concede to Lisa's skepticism so quickly—especially since he was trying to make her feel better—but he had to respect his honest feelings after regarding the rock and the hard place that he had just walked away from not too long ago.

"Y'know, you actually have a point," Lincoln said, slipping his hands away from Lisa's. "Yeah, we can tell her how much we love her all we want, but it wasn't like we haven't told her that all this time. And yet, she _still_ has depression."

"Precisely," Lisa replied. "I'll admit, even though I said I wasn't racked with sorrow, I'm still displeased with how my scientific affinities have never branched into areas that could've afforded me with extensive knowledge in psychology."

She took a break to pause and push her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"My curiosity has always leaned towards fields of human anatomy and physiology, zoology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, and biology." Lincoln's stomach churned nauseously when Lisa's hands shook and she pushed a sharp breath into her body through her nostrils. "Perhaps if I had always taken interest in psychology, I could've noticed Lori's depression symptoms and gotten our parents notified of her condition _before_ it led to her getting brutalized in a car crash."

The quivering tone her last few words took nearly broke Lincoln's heart, and it was all he could do make himself from shedding tears. As much as he tried to hold himself together, his sadness wasn't subtle enough to keep Lisa from commenting on it.

Thankfully, there was enough strength behind them to tell Lincoln that she wasn't about to start bawling in despair.

"I'm not blaming myself, if that's what you suppose. It's _regret_ , not guilt, that passes over me periodically. Even then, I know it'd be unwise to allow it to consume me. For Lori's sake, my research musn't be abated by misplaced angst."

Lincoln couldn't pass up on the segue in front of him, especially since he had assurance that Lisa wasn't contending with any deep-seated gloom—he had come all this way to figure out what Lisa was up to, after all.

"So, exactly _what_ are you researching?" he asked.

When Lisa let out another sigh, he knew what it meant—frustration at the lack of progress.

"I must admit that I haven't unearthed a starting point from which I can begin to dedicate my laser-focus on _just_ yet," Lisa said. "Although I've been acquainting myself with the finer details of depression and some therapeutic practices that deal with such mood disorders, I've yet to come across a _solution_ that I can work with.

Keep in mind that I'm attempting to confront this matter with sensitivity. A more invasive method would require directly interacting with Lori's brain and...well, I'd rather _not_ consider that option. Even a low-risk procedure would be inappropriate, given that her life would undoubtedly be in jeopardy."

Lincoln nodded. A quick fix that has Lisa's well-intended but haphazard touches thrown in wasn't what Lori deserved.

"Rest assured," Lisa continued, "I won't deny Lori the love and support she needs. However, I have to commit to this task with everything that I have. You have my word as a scientist that I'll..."

Lisa shook her head. "No. No, you have my word as her _sister_ that I'll bring her out of this."

Her confidence in her abilities wasn't as bombastic as her declarations of her amazing scientific breakthroughs usually were, but it still spread through Lincoln like a virus.

"I think you've got a pretty good shot, Lisa," Lincoln said, smiling as he brought his hands to Lisa's shoulders. "But don't think that you have to do this all by yourself, okay? If you need me for anything, I'm just a door down. Remember, your big brother's always got your back."

Lisa smiled back at him. "I'll be sure to remember that."

Lincoln was surprised when Lisa beat him to the punch and pushed forward first for a hug, but he wouldn't play the fool and fight back. Instead, he let her snuggle her face into his stomach while he wrapped his arms around her head.

Much like that hug he had with Leni a few days ago, he _really_ needed this. He could only hope that everyone's hugs would have the same effect on Lori.

All good things had to come to an end, though, and their hug wasn't anything different. But rather then feel total loss once he let go, the sight of a familiar irregularity made him smile bemusedly.

"Oops," Lincoln said, his eyes looking over a strand of Lisa's hair that had, once again, flipped over the rim of her eyeglasses.

Lisa quirked an eyebrow. "What have you done to warrant an 'oops'?"

"Your hair got all messy again. Guess it was my fault for hugging you too hard."

Lincoln's growing smile made Lisa cringe knowingly.

"Lincoln, I can assure you that..." Her will to fight of his imminent affection all but crumble. "Oh, very well. Make it quick."

Lincoln laughed and got to work fixing her hair back into place in the same manner as before. He capped it off with a peck on her cheek before he headed towards the door.

"See ya later, Lisa. Good luck."

But just as the thought of tending Lisa's feelings exited his mind as soon as he left her room, another matter unexpectedly entered. Once again, he had another troubled heart on his heart, though this one was a three-hour drive away.

' _Shoot!'_ Lincoln thought, his teeth barred in a panicked expression as he clutched his temples. _'I totally forgot to tell Ronnie Anne what's going on with Lori!'_

It was a testament to her relatively good nature that she hadn't called him sooner—looking to give Lori and earful—but Lincoln wasn't about to take her patience for granted by not giving her all the details about Lori's condition as soon as possible.

But just as he was about to make a beeline for his bedroom to retrieve his cellphone off his dresser, his motions were halted by the grumbling of his stomach.

' _Okay, fine. I'll tell Ronnie Anne what's going on right after I get myself a snack. I can't smooth things over on an empty stomach.'_

* * *

_**LATER THAT EVENING...** _

* * *

_"_ __Okay, Leni, I think Lori's gotten enough rest. Could you run up to her room and tell her we're about to eat dinner?"_ _

Leni's intuition had been on the money—it __was__ another Lori-centered responsibility, after all. And what Mom had called her to do still left her body tingled with spurts of bleak uncertainty as she carried herself up the stairs, towards her bedroom.

Whether she knew it or not, Mom had evoked an inner conflict within her. Leni wasn't willing to lose that swell of confidence that Mom drew out of her when she tried to prop her up as someone that Lori needed in her life more than ever. It felt wrong to toot her horn, but Leni had to admit that Mom had a point—even if she only had an inkling to what Lori was crippled with before today's appointment had dragged everything to light, at least that was better than what anyone else's perceptions could pick up.

But even her assurance had their limits. It was one thing to embrace the task of handling the Prozac. There wasn't any experience to make her question herself, to second guess her usefulness. But there was a considerable gap between where she stood now and getting Lori to come out of her shell.

She had tried to call out to her once before.

And she failed miserably _._

The day after the babysitting incident might have been months ago, but passing through the remembrance of standing outside her door—her heart buzzing with reverberating aches and her throat swelling from choked sobs after trying to reach Lori—quelled Leni's enthusiasm somewhat.

There was a chance that she'd have to relive that isolation and defeat in just a few moments, except the stakes were even higher now. There was no room to leave things the way they were if, or when, Lori would cling to her separation and ask to be left alone, no excuse not to try harder and break down her barriers with everything she had.

With nothing left to uncover from Lori's conduct, all Leni could see were wires that she had to diffuse, whether Lori could feasibly appreciate her intervention or not.

Now, there was only a matter of finding the right approach.

* * *

"Lori?" Leni's question was spoken in a gentle plea, almost as soft as the knocks on her bedroom door that followed. "Lori?"

Her words were swallowed up by the unnerving silence of the hallway, and no response rang out to comfort her. That was the worst part about all of this—in the midst of her wariness for a good outcome, she couldn't even get Lori to acknowledge her. Leni expected a higher degree of difficulty versus the last time she was in this position, but she always hung onto the thought that there would be actual words to reply to. Whether they were something as brute and ugly as "Go away, Leni," at least there was emotion she could appeal to, could reason with.

But this? The longer Leni dwelt on the stillness on the other side of the room, the more she couldn't bear to stomach it. She couldn't believe that she was still asleep after she had made her light disturbance, and it ultimately meant the worst out of anything she could've dreaded.

Lori...was _ignoring_ her.

When she knocked again, her motions had more force behind them, and the rattling noises of the pounded door drilled in Leni's ears even harder than her quickening heartbeats.

"Lori, it's time to eat dinner."

In a reflex—a desperate bid to counter the mocking quiet that greeted her efforts—she latched her fingers around the cold steel of the doorknob and twisted it roughly. Her distress fogged the memory of trying to open the locked door in vain before she started knocked again.

The gusts of choppy, ragged breath in her inhales and exhales choked her up before she could call out to Lori again, but she eventually found the strength to pull through. "Lori, could you please..."

The last word caused her to stop and the tension in her body to dissipate from roaring flames to slow-burning blaze that centered in the middle of her chest. Fear led the charge, but all it took was a quick recollection of her last words to mitigate the wild panic but replace it with a more, grounded yet equally as palpable sensation: _self-_ _disgust_.

Her begging? Her weak appeals? What had _any_ of that earned the last time? Feelings of hopelessness? A misplaced sense of resignation from her post after a few "good attempts" at trying to tend to Lori's broken emotions?

And now, she was going through the motions after she gave her mother her word, after she promised herself that she wasn't going to be a helpless bystander anymore.

Slowly, the deep breathing returned, and it accompanied a stern glower. Just as the strain in her curled fist rose, so did the volume of her voice. "You have to come out now, Lori. You have to eat something."

This time, the lack of a reply only gave way for her assertiveness to rise to new heights as she considered the quandary from a new angle. She'd be depriving Lori of some semblance of dignity by forcibly barging in, but her older sister's belligerent response would just be something she'd have to get over.

Without a second thought, Leni removed her hand from the door, slipped its fingers through her hair, and yanked out one of her bobby pins. With a tight grip between her thumb and pointer finger, it was easy for Leni to insert the pin through the crack of the door and give a few well-placed rotations of her wrist before she wedged the tip between the tumbler's plug and its holding place.

Taking her other hand, she worked the knob while she used her pick-locking hand to deftly unlatch the plug with a _*click*._ Doing so forced the door to hinge back slightly, emitting tiny creak.

Her nerves steeled and her conviction supplemented by a boost of adrenaline, Leni dropped the bobby pin as she quickly pushed the door aside…

...and found, not a tirade from a taken aback, flustered Lori as she sat in bed, but of a peacefully sleeping Lori whose snoring cut through the semi-darkness of the room.

Suddenly, the boldness that thrummed through her veins with the rhythm of tribal war drums mellowed out as Leni took in the serene, peaceful scene. Thanks to the open window, moonlight was able to guide her vision to the most illuminated spot—with her head and back slightly propped against the headboard, Lori laid supinely in slumber, seemingly undisturbed by Leni's actions.

It was more than enough to make Leni reconsider her priorities. All she wanted from Lori was peace of mind. And as much as she would've enjoyed seeing a breakthrough as soon as tonight, with her wide awake and willing to accept her family's loving embraces, there wasn't a need for disregarding a compromise—she could leave Lori to rest for as long as she could throughout the night and spend the whole day with her tomorrow.

But as lovely as that sounded, she couldn't leave things at that and go back to the dining room. At least, not yet.

"H-hey, Lori. Sorry if I disturbed you," Leni said softly as she leaned against the doorframe. "But Mom told me to get you so you can come downstairs for dinner."

She didn't expect an answer, given how quietly she greeted her sister. But as silly as it was, she couldn't help but want to leave Lori with some words of encouragement. Even if there was a good chance that Lori wouldn't hear them, she was still pressed to make her mission known out loud.

"Mom and Dad told us everything about you. And...well, I still don't get it. I still don't get how someone as pretty and sweet and loving and caring as you can feel so bad all the time. But just because I don't get it doesn't mean that I don't wanna help. Everyone in this house means the world to me, and you're no different."

At this point, Leni had a good idea of what she wanted to see out of Lori the next day, but the part that resonated in her mind the most concerned her eating.

"I'll tell Mom and Dad that you still need to sleep," Leni continued, "but tomorrow I have to make sure you get plenty to eat. I'll even ask Dad to make your favorite omelet. Doesn't that sound nice?"

It took Leni a few seconds for the silliness of her actions to finally dawn on her. None of what she said implied that she was looking for a direct response, but a question did.

"Oh, that's right," Leni said, letting out a few sheepish chuckles. "You're asleep. My bad..."

With that, Leni reached out and grabbed the doorknob, ready to shut it. Before she did, though, she allowed her most important words to be spoken louder than anything she had said before:

"See you later, Lori. I love you."

Leni wouldn't mind if Lori had been broken out of dreamland to hear her say _that_.

* * *

_**THE NEXT DAY...** _

* * *

As far as Lynn Sr. was concerned, this was an unexpected but vital part of Lori's breakthrough—so much so that he felt like a fool for not thinking about it sooner.

Presently, he and his wife were in their bedroom. While he stood idly by the door, Rita sat on the bed while she talked on the phone. All Lynn Sr. could do was make out what the person on the other end was saying based on how Rita replied to him. He'd get answers soon enough, but not being immediately "in the loop" never felt worse than nowadays—if there was anything pertinent to Lori's health, good or bad, he _had_ to know right away.

At last, Rita gave the caller a farewell and dropped the phone by her side. Besides his antsy nerves, it was the neutrality on her face that compelled him to ask, "What did he say, dear?"

What could've made her look like _that_? Good news? Bad news? A mixture of both?

Rita's eyes, which had been glued to the carpet, remained affixed as she replied. "He'll be coming by in a few days."

Lynn Sr. blinked and frowned confusedly. "Uh...that's all? Honey, that's great news, isn't it?"

For reasons he couldn't discern, his response was what caused Rita to turn her head towards him. Lynn Sr. swallowed as a lump coiled in his throat. He had severely underestimated Rita's so-called neutrality—there was much more grief to be seen with the angle he had of her now.

"It was awful. I could tell he was trying to keep it together, but he could hardly pull it off."

It only took that one little tidbit of information to somber Lynn Sr.'s spirits.

"I can only imagine," he replied.

He said it, but he didn't really mean it. He had his own hell to walk through. Living through someone else's version, even for a second, might've been too much to bear.

But still, there was something to be thankful for. Lori would be getting help in a matter of days.

Speaking of help...

"By the way," Lynn Sr. said, "when are we gonna go back to hunting for an affordable therapist?"

It didn't surprise him when his wife let out a frustrated groan. Yesterday's afternoon was filled with nothing more than hours of tireless web searches and phone calls that led to dead end after dead end.

"Soon," Rita replied. "I just hope we're luckier than we were yesterday."

Lynn Sr. nodded and said, "Yeah. Me too."

Needless to say, love was the most important ingredient with Lori's recovery, but a dash of luck couldn't be overlooked, either.


End file.
